Category: Hospitals

Notice of Next Meeting of UMC Ad Hoc Operations Review Committee.

Media Advisory

The next meeting of the UMC Ad Hoc Operations Review Committee will be held on Monday, March 12, 3:30 – 5:00 p.m. in the Glass Room in the basement of the Ambulatory Care Building at University of Louisville Hospital.

The published agenda is:

  • 1) Approval of minutes of 2/21/12 meeting
  • 2) Conversation with Dixon Hughes Goodman re scope and timing of their work
  • 3) Next steps

Comment:

As was promised, I received this  notice on March 2.  The public is invited.  Why not attend to show that there is community concern other than mine!  Of course, I am only too happy to report for you.

The committee’s formation was announced by UofL President Ramsey last Feb 2 and its work was expected to be completed by April.  The first committee meeting was held almost 3 weeks later on Feb 21.  It was clear at that time that there was no common vision of the scope of the Committee’s work.  A consultant was hired to help define those goals and to do the work of the committee.  Next week’s meeting will be almost 6 weeks after inception with  only 3 weeks left till April.  The agenda reprinted above makes it clear that the scope of the project remains undefined.  At this rate is It is hard to imagine that much can be done over the next 6 weeks to keep on schedule for an April finish.  Indeed, the University hopes to complete its parallel RFP process and have its new/old partner on board in early April!  So why are they doing this?  There are several respected and  high-powered people on this committee, but it appears that the University is poised to do what it wants anyway before their Committee process can inform any decision.  Talk about wasted time and squandered opportunity.  If there is anybody in Louisville who feels they can trust this University and its leadership, please tell us why you think so in the comments to this posting.

Peter Hasselbacher
March 6, 2012

UofL and UMC File an RFP for a New Hospital Partner

The University of Louisville and University Medical Center Inc. seek a knight in shining armor to bail them out.

“Investing in and delivering healthcare services, education and research in conjunction with the University of Louisville and University Medical Center.”

The University of Louisville and University Medical Center, Inc. have jointly filed an RFP “to seek a business partner that will bring capabilities, experience, and commitment to include but not limited to: Critical Care, Facilities/Operations, Teaching/ Training and Research.

The following represents my initial thoughts as I read through the request for proposal (RFP) and the attached current Affiliation Agreement by which UMC operates University Hospital for the Commonwealth and the University. I apologize for typos and bad grammar. I am trading off timeliness for polish. I will attempt to clean it up in the days ahead. Because the timeline chosen by UMC and the University is deliberately and unduly brief, I would rather have something out there to work from then nothing at all.

Executive Summary
By way of an executive summary of my initial thoughts, shaped as they are by other recent events in our community, I offer the following.

The qualifications and criteria for judging responses to this RFP parallel exactly the justifications and solutions advanced at the time of the recently failed acquisition of University Hospital by Catholic Health Initiatives. I am having the feeling of déjà vu all over again. The extraordinarily short timeframe of action, together with the severely constricted avenues by which an external agency can gather information are not compatible with the due diligence that should be required of any third party not already intimately involved in the operation of the downtown medical center. The criteria for processing applications described in the RFP gives the University and UMC great leeway in whom they might select or refuse to consider. I cannot in my own mind come to any other conclusion than that this RFP was written solely with a single applicant in mind who has already signaled interest in close affiliation with University Hospital and with whom the structure of agreements has already been agreed. I cannot force the word, “sham,” from my thoughts. What a shame. I will be glad to be proven wrong.

The RFP process does not permit any public disclosure until after an agreement is signed. There is no recognition that any acceptance by the Commonwealth of Kentucky is required. The University of Louisville and UMC appear to have ignored any lessons they might have learned from the fiasco of last fall and winter. This community demanded the right to know what decisions were being made about their healthcare and by whom.

The rush to conclusion seems incongruous with the magnitude of the undertaking. I cannot personally ignore the conclusion that the haste is intended to allow documents to be signed before the Kentucky Appeals court has ruled on the issue of whether University Medical Inc. is a private entity free to do as it pleases, or whether it is an arm of the University and of the Commonwealth. What rational corporation would take on the responsibilities of this RFP without such determination made and finalized?

Many numbers are thrown out but fewer definitions and even fewer comparative data. An attempt is being made to compare our situation here in Louisville with other Academic centers around the country. This is justifiable and worthwhile, but cannot alone determine the direction our community should take. The current consultants to UMC have stressed that every medical center is different. We want ours to be different to. We want it to be better.

All the comments in this brief represent my personal opinions but I would like to think they are informed opinions. There is no one in Louisville more committed than I to the long-term survival of University Hospital as an ethical and excellent teaching facility, and for a healthcare support system for the underserved that is characterized by quality, dignity, and justice.

In my mind, the least positive implication of this rush to conclude a deal is that we will memorialize in stone for yet another generation, a segregated and second-class system of healthcare for those who do not qualify for mainstream medical services. The comments below are not mine, but I could not have expressed them better. A respected authority describes the system we have now in Louisville.

“If someone decides there are some hospitals in Louisville whose job it is to take care of the poor black and the marginalized and that it’s okay if they have to be kept waiting for a couple of weeks and it’s okay if the carpet is frayed, it’s okay if the phones don’t get answered, and it’s okay if the doctor is late, but there are other hospitals in Louisville where upper-class white people get taken care of by doctors who answer the phone on the first ring and smile a lot. There’s shag carpeting, and wood wainscoting on the wall. Was there a plebiscite … in Louisville where people voted and said they wanted to have segregated medical care? I don’t think so. But, there is a very strong theme that it’s okay for medical students and interns and residents to learn on poor people, but when you’re done, then you’ll be able to take care of private patients.”

Edward C. Halperin, MD
From: “Slave Medicine and the Banality of Evil.”
Gheens Foundation Lectureship,
University of Louisville School of Medicine, Feb 2, 2012

To participate in the above system of contemporary segregation is to participate in an evil.  I think it is time for a plebiscite in Louisville, and I trust that our citizens to favor a different set of priorities. Those decisions must not be made behind closed doors by a self-selected privileged few. The leadership of our University and our health care systems need to hear from all of us.

Peter Hasselbacher, MD

Analysis of RFP continued below. Continue reading “UofL and UMC File an RFP for a New Hospital Partner”

How does UofL hospital compare to other hospitals?

Let’s look at some numbers.

The University of Louisville is going to try and make a case that it has unique requirements that will require additional non-patient revenue to fix. Specifically, they are asking for more state money, or alternatively, permission to partner with an outside business entity that is willing to give them more money. The claim will be made they are caring for a disproportionate share of nonpaying patients, and do not have enough profitable patients to subsidize the losses the way other hospitals do. This is a reasonable argument to make but it is an incomplete one. The University’s problem will not be fixed by money alone. There are a host of other issues that must be addressed simultaneously. I have begun to discuss these elsewhere.

There are 3502 acute care hospitals that participate in the Medicare program. Of these, 1047 are teaching hospitals, and 601 are large urban teaching hospitals like the University of Louisville Hospital. It would be easy for the University or its consultants to pick and choose hospitals to compare with that would bolster its case. Picking your own benchmarks is one way to make yourself look good, or in this case bad. Much of the University’s credibility will hinge on the choice of comparable institutions. Fortunately, there is an ocean of comparative data available that I believe helps put things in perspective and can provide a starting point for a broad-based study of our medical school and its principal teaching hospital. I will try to present such information on the Institute’s website. Such analysis often challenges popular wisdom.

For example, teaching hospitals get billions of dollars of special funding from Medicare (and Medicaid) solely because they have medical residents on their wards. These Direct and Indirect payments for Graduate Medical Education (interns and residents) increased substantially over the years as a result of effective lobbying. It was argued from the start that teaching hospitals deserve more money because they have extra expenses related to faculty salary, inefficiencies of care, and for other reasons that may or may not be relevant today. Federal analysts estimate that Medicare pays teaching hospitals twice as much for graduate medical education than the actual cost of those programs to the hospitals. Not to be denied, the teaching hospital lobby continues to argue that they are entitled to the extra money because of their disproportionate service to the poor. Is it in fact true that teaching hospitals take care of more of the poor than non-teaching hospitals? I was frankly surprised when my first attempt to find out showed that in fact, the proposition does not appear to be true. Continue reading “How does UofL hospital compare to other hospitals?”

University of Louisville’s Review of Its Hospital Operations.

And Who Will Take Care of the Poor?

One doesn’t ask of one who suffers: What is your country and what is your religion? One merely says, you suffer, That is enough for me. You belong to me and I shall help you.        Attributed to Louis Pasteur.

The Commonwealth of Kentucky once required hospitals and doctor’s offices to post the prices of their top 20 services. This was fair– hospitals were asking their patients how they expected to pay. The policy concept of disclosure was and is reasonable, but the results were embarrassing, unused, and perhaps not even helpful. Under pressure, the Commonwealth repealed the law after two years.

I suggest we would all feel better (and probably even be better) if we would post the above thesis instead. Why don’t we? Most or all of the doctors with whom I went to medical school would have echoed Pasteur at the time. I suspect most hospital administrators and their corporate boards also wish they could post Pasteur’s profession on their front doors. After all, the earliest hospitals were established almost entirely to serve the poor. The non-profit status of today’s hospitals stems from those charitable roots. The sad fact is that in our system, no single physician or hospital could stay in business if they actually tried to serve all who showed up on their doorstep. It takes a community effort. In Louisville, talk of indigent care usually focusses on University Hospital. Why is that, and should it?

Fitness of University Hospital to serve the poor.

Earlier this month, and under the sword of an examination by the State Auditor’s Office, the University of Louisville announced that it would review its hospital operations to address questions of the strengths and vulnerabilities that were raised during the debate over their proposed merger/acquisition by Catholic Health Initiatives. They will retain an outside consultant of their choosing and have named a 9 person review committee. We are told that the review will consider how University Hospital compares to other academic hospitals financially and in the amount of “indigent care” provided. The University obviously still has a partnership on its mind, but declined to answer a direct question of whether it had resumed discussions with the new KentuckyOne Health entity. [Of course it has!]

I credit the University folks for opening the planned meetings to the public, but it looks to me that they want to control what is discussed just as tightly as they did when they rolled out their campaign for last Fall’s failed merger. Faced with a truly independent outside audit, and still embroiled in the courts over their withholding of court-ordered documents, some damage control might be judged imperative. It is axiomatic in matters such as these, that if you can select the issues and define the vocabulary of the debate, you have won before you even start. The University wants this discussion to be about how many medically indigent patients they serve, and to convince us that all that is needed is more money from the state or elsewhere. One strategy that I see evolving, seeks to give the Governor and Attorney General’s offices the political cover needed to reverse their previous rejection of the CHI acquisition.  The University leadership has (1.) already demanded more money than they know the Commonwealth can provide, (2.) will claim that only more money will solve the problem, and then (3.) present once again a deal they still hope to make with Jewish Hospital and CHI, (now KentuckyHealth One).  This would be an incomplete victory. Continue reading “University of Louisville’s Review of Its Hospital Operations.”