One of my local hospitals is closing..are you seeing this?

[w8liftinglady]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/021308dnmetlanchospital.b67e7759.html
Medical Center at Lancaster, the only hospital in the southern Dallas County city, will close Thursday after 25 years of operation.

...But the hospital continued to face obstacles such as competition, high levels of unpaid patient bills and low payment rates from HMOs.

[peace13]

1. It is a mind boggle to me why single payer insurance

would not be good for the hospitals. It seems like bills would be paid and there would be many more customers. Go figure. Sorry to hear about this. Peace, Kim

[truedelphi]

2. In Rhode Island, A hospital that was begging the

HMO that delegated its payments, continues to plead for a few rate hikes in order to make a go of it.

The CEO of that HMO makes more than the combined wages of the 2200 employees of the hospital!

[bdamomma]

8. do you know the name of the Hospital in RI?

[truedelphi]

10. Saint Joseph Health Care is the hospital and the Goliath they

Are tangling with is the HMO, United HealthCare

[fed-up]

3. yep, Tuolumne General Hospital in my former town in California closed July 2007

but they try to paint such a rosy picture

http://www.uniondemocrat.com/news/results.cfm?story_no=24320
The sky has not fallen onTuolumne County health care

Published: September 5, 2007

Amid great concern and sadness, Tuolumne General Hospital (TGH) closed its doors, after a century and a half of operation on June 30. Only long term care and psychiatric care continue at what is called Tuolumne General Medical Facility. It was no fun: Scores of staff members lost their jobs and thousands of loyal TGH patients were forced to look elsewhere for care.

..snip
The switchover to a single provider has not been without glitches and marathon emergency room (ER) waits and backlogged laboratories have been reported in Letters the Editor. And being forced out of a job, even if half-decent employment is found in short order, is never enjoyable.

Finally, the county was clearly better off with the extra beds, doctors, nurses, clinics and labs that two hospitals afforded. Trouble is, we couldn't afford it.

In the past decade the money-losing county hospital was propped up by more than $40 million in general fund subsidies and loans. And last fiscal year, with red ink creeping toward the $9 million mark, other departments were each asked to cut spending by 7.5 percent.

Fewer deputies, shorter office hours, less road maintenance and service cuts in many other areas became the price we were paying to keep TGH open. After a series of ,at times, agonizing public hearings, county supervisors did the inevitable and the necessary: They voted to close the hospital.

..snip

edited to add

luckily I managed to get my and my son's medical records when the Tuolumne Clinic closed in 1999 or 2000, I just happened to go visit my sister and called to get my records and learned they were closing their doors. There were stacks and stacks of boxes of files in the clinic and I got there just a day before they were going to be bought to storage. Don't know if I ever would have been able to track them down if that had happened.

[lovuian]

4. more are coming

and they will be in the poorer areas

[no_hypocrisy]

5. Four hospitals in NJ have closed in a month.

"Financial issues".

[lisainmilo]

6. Oh my....I am sorry for you and your community!

That is awful!

[ileus]

7. They closed my hospital back in May, go single payer and 1/2 will close.

If the new gummunt insurance pays anything like medicare/medicade hospitals will close fast. People won't/don't pay co-pays as low as 10 bucks.

We tossed out a laser last year because it was cheaper to stop offering the service than continue the procedure.

Third party insurance 741 bucks normal charge
Our insurance & Agreements like UMWA 637 bucks discount for in network/agreements
Medicaid 251 bucks reimbursement

They did the number crunching and determined the hospital would be more profitable if the laser was ditched.

With single payer either the government will have to increase the reimbursement or subsidize the healthcare system...

Whatever the candidates are saying single payer will cost, multiply it by 10 at least.

[Hekate]

9. Yes. It's happening all over. At least two in our region that I know of...

St. Francis closed in Santa Barbara, and another over in Ventura area. We barely got to hang on to Goleta Valley Hospital (my town) and were lucky that Cottage Hosp (Santa Barbara) bought it and kept it open.

It's the for-profit insurance-company-driven paradigm that's doing it. Hospitals just can't keep up with rising costs.

Hekate

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

11. I was amazed to see the size of the billing department in a hospital I went to 3 years ago

It took up an entire wing of the hospital and had dozens of employees and shelf upon shelf of billing files. That's got to be a big drain on the overhead, I think.

[mvccd1000]

12. We just had two new ones open within the last year or so.

Now I have an emergency room within two miles or so.

Very handy. :)