Category: University of Louisville Hospital

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.”

KentuckyOne Poised To Announce Layoffs of Senior Executives.

I have been advised by two sources that KentuckyOne Health will soon announce the elimination of several system-wide or senior executive positions designed to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and emphasize local leadership.  The as-yet unconfirmed names of the individuals currently in those positions include clinical and operational executives at the highest level.  I am unaware if the names of included leadership comprise a complete list or represent the tip of the iceberg of things to come.  Perhaps as an early indicator, the senior physician executive at Jewish and Sts. Mary & Elisabeth Hospitals left that position a few weeks ago.  As a company outsider, it is impossible to know all the reasons for changes in personnel.  These often include the personal career plans of the employee, but also concerns about the fit between employer and employee in meeting the goals of the particular corporation.  KentuckyOne may well once again be feeling financial pressures that cannot be denied. It has laid-off employees in the past to decrease expenses – a strategy that in the longer run was not entirely successful at University Hospital.

On the other hand.
One of the most common complaints I hear from my University of Louisville colleagues reflects what is considered to be unwanted and disruptive outsourcing or other “outsider intrusion” on the part of Catholic Health Initiatives or KentuckyOne management that does not allow for appropriate local initiative or control, or which treats all hospitals the same no matter where they are located, or fails to acknowledge the particular needs of their patient population. From this perspective, a diminution of the role of system-wide executives might be considered a worthwhile result. On the other hand, I suppose it is possible that a state-level KentuckyOne system control might be replaced by even more direct CHI control from Colorado!  The desire for local control is, however, at odds with current national and local policy, or financial pressures for hospital and health system consolidation and coordination.  The health of KentuckyOne and its partnership with the University of Louisville is a matter of critical concern for Jefferson County and the Commonwealth.  Things have not been going well so far. Continue reading “KentuckyOne Poised To Announce Layoffs of Senior Executives.”

Issues of Quality and Safety at University and Other Hospitals.

Is Rome Burning While Nero Fiddles?

Screen Shot 2016-06-07 at 10.24.46 PMKentucky’s Hospitals have not done well in the past on national Hospital Rankings including the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Score.  Things seem to be getting worse. In the most recent iteration last month, once again Kentucky had fewer ‘A’-rated hospitals than the national median and more hospitals rated near the bottom with increasing numbers of ‘D’s.  More troublesome is the observation that 5 of the 6 hospitals receiving a ‘D’ are in the same hospital system. Three of these are in Louisville including two of our major teaching hospitals. Continue reading “Issues of Quality and Safety at University and Other Hospitals.”

Potpourri of Health Policy Issues in June.

My cup runneth over with potential issues to explore.

June has been a busy month both locally and nationally insofar as things I like to write about. The shame-on-me is that I have not carved out enough time to do so!  In part I am still picking up the pieces after my early spring travels. Exploring how to unpack and deal with the new Medicare prescription drug data base also took a lot of time.  The truth is that I am a slow writer handicapped by a default and probably over-wordy professorial style.  I haven’t even been able to update the Institute’s Facebook and Twitter pages!  What follows is a list of things that occured during the month that I wanted to write about and hope to do so in more detail later.  These are not necessarily in chronological order or of importance.

The Supremes Rock & Rule!
We were presented with two back-to-back major decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court. The first, King v. Burwell, allows federal subsidies of health insurance premiums for low income individuals and their families to continue even if their insurance was purchased in states that chose to allow the federal government to operate their health insurance exchanges.  The lawsuit brought by Obama/Obamacare-haters to limit premium support to insured individuals in states like Kentucky that chose to operate their own exchanges would have essentially gutted the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and tossed millions back into the uninsured category. For the time being, Obamacare stands intact for at least the next year and a half, despite promises by opponents to throw up additional challenges. All our legislators should be working together to deal with a major remaining deficiency of the ACA.  The Act has been very successful in decreasing the number of uninsured people, but it makes little headway against the exploding costs of unnecessary, marginally effective, or for that matter even necessary medical care.  Continuing to forbid the federal government to negotiate over the prices of drugs is a case in point. Subsidies were deemed necessary for a reason! Continue reading “Potpourri of Health Policy Issues in June.”