Author: P Hasselbacher

Catholic Health Initiatives Gives Investors an Update: Substantial Challenges Ongoing.

Senior executives from Catholic health initiatives (CHI) hosted a webcast and teleconference on May 31 to respond to questions about their FY17 3d Quarter Fiscal report. My colleagues at Insider Louisville have already commented on the update. You can read the slides that accompanied the presentation yourself. The following items were particularly significant to my listening.

1. Except that it was going to occur on July 1, nothing was said about the transfer of University of Louisville Hospital back to University control. Successful relationships with academic medical centers including at Baylor and Creighton were claimed.

2. Little was said about the sale of assets in Kentucky other than the process was “evolving,” that the company was moving with its advisors, that there is “a fair amount of interest,” and that they were “moving as quickly as possible” and “ready to move forward.” However, there has been no release of a Request For Purchase (RFP) so apparently no formal process has yet begun. I have no feeling on how rapidly things are moving or not. I suspect it will be challenging to find buyers for all the properties, certainly all at one group.

CHI will focus on regrouping around its “Legacy Lexington” facilities. I interpret this to imply that those hospitals are not currently on the chopping block. Where KentuckyOne will keep its administrative headquarters was not mentioned at this level of discussion. Continue reading “Catholic Health Initiatives Gives Investors an Update: Substantial Challenges Ongoing.”

Catholic Health Initiatives Third Quarter Financial Report, FY 2017

Is it good enough to turn the tide for CHI?

Catholic Health Initiatives released today its most recent quarterly report covering the first 9 months ending March 31, 2017. Making sense out of the raw financial numbers is for me probably like having a banker decipher a complicated clinical trial or biochemical research paper. I will leave it to the financial experts to explain it to us. To my first pass and naive evaluation, it looks like CHI is hanging on, but not improving to the extent needed to deal with its $8.8 Billion dept. I suspect this is not going to help their bond rating very much. This report reveals much about why CHI is taking the drastic downsizing actions in Kentucky that we are now seeing unroll. This may be an existential move for the company.

At the end of this article, I show extracted verbatim text from the report that I think will be of interest to us here in Louisville and Kentucky. You can read the full report yourself here.

In summary:

• It is very clear that KentuckyOne Health is the weak sister of the CHI regions.

•In Louisville, University Medical Center (UMC) making a profit. (This is not the same as University of Louisville Hospital, is it?) On dissolution of the UofL partnership. CHI expects to incur a loss of $279.4 million, but I have no understanding what that means. Who can help us?

•CHI hopes to close on its facilities that have been designated for sale by the end of 2017. Those facilities lost $61 million in the first three quarters. The estimated total assets for the KentuckyOne operations being divested as of March 31 2017 is $534.9 million. KentuckyOne/CHI hopes to complete the sale(s) by the end of the year.

•The possible merger with Dignity is not a sure thing.

•CHI has been selling other of its physical assets to raise money to the tune of over $1 billion in gross proceeds. (Does this go to its current bottom line and make matters look better in the current year?) It now must pay rent to the new owners of $52.7 million yearly.

•KentuckyOne Health won its first few cases in the litigation over unnecessary angioplasties in St. Joseph London, but began to lose the most recent cases with high monetary verdicts. Settlements are now being made for at least some cases. I suspect this is not going to be cheap.

What does the statement say to you? I expect many others in the business world are going to help us tomorrow. If I have made mistakes in reading this report, help me fix them.

Peter Hasselbacher, MD
President, KHPI
Emeritus Professor of Medicine, UofL
May 19, 2017 Continue reading “Catholic Health Initiatives Third Quarter Financial Report, FY 2017”

KentuckyOne Health To Sell Its Major Assets In Louisville.

Beginning last Thursday, word began trickling out to journalists and the public that KentuckyOne Health, a major regional unit of Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), was preparing to announce plans to sell almost all its hospitals and medical centers in Louisville and a handful elsewhere in the state. I had been told earlier in the week that the announcement would be made today, Monday, but there were so many leaks that KentuckyOne sent an email to its employees outlining its plans.  I presume KentuckyOne wanted take control of the message before the reportage dam broke. The email can be read here.

For those of us in Louisville, the only major facility not being sold is Our Lady of Peace, a psychiatric hospital.  Both of KentuckyOne’s acute care hospitals, (Jewish Hospital and Sts. Mary and Elizabeth Hospital), the Frazier Rehabilitation Institute, and all four outpatient Medical Centers (Jewish East, South, Southwest, and Northeast) are on the chopping block. Nearby Jewish Hospital Shelbyville, which recently underwent a critical review by the Inspector General for an EMTALA violation, is also for sale.  KentuckyOne employs many physicians. The fate of individual owned- or contracted medical practices in Louisville and elsewhere is not clear to me from the email. Continue reading “KentuckyOne Health To Sell Its Major Assets In Louisville.”

FDA Panel Finds Opana-ER Not Worth The Risk!

Opana ER is the brand name of the specific extended release preparation of oxymorphone HCL marketed by Endo Pharmaceuticals, Inc.  This was the drug of choice that underlay the explosion of opioid addiction and of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis infections in intravenous users in nearby Scott County, Indiana.  Opana is back in the news, but not in a good way for Endo.  The FDA assembled an expert review panel last week to opine on whether the benefits of Opana ER outweighed its risk to its users.  The short summary of its findings and recommendations is that the benefits do not outweigh the risks, and that the drug’s continued marketing should be controlled in a variety of possible ways including removal from the market, or restrictions on who can prescribe it and under what conditions.

To summarize the findings of the article below, Opana ER is not a big player in the prescription opioid market in any event.  Its active ingredient, oxymorphone,  is manufactured or distributed in the US by at least 19 different companies but fills less than 1% of opioid prescriptions.  (I must admit up front that have no idea who actually makes what pills or where the active ingredient in the various preparations comes from.) A detailed list of individual versions of oxymorphone by NDC from the labelers below is available here. (or here as Excel file.) It occurs to me as I see such long lists of labeler names, that with so many ways for a drug to enter the community, opportunities for diversion from supervised distribution become correspondingly more numerous. Given all the apparent distributors, is it even possible for an Endo or a Mallinckrodt to know where the drugs they might manufacture end up? Mallinckrodt in particular has been accused of not keeping very good track at all, at least in Florida. Continue reading “FDA Panel Finds Opana-ER Not Worth The Risk!”