Sunday, September 23, 2007

"Forest Gump" has a Question...

Anonymous writer questions:

I have become a regular reader of this blog and i have to say it always offers very interesting opinions.. (because its all opinion). Well i'm about to give mine i guess. Well first off i have a few questions.

Number One Why the hell do u have to buy out your competition ( Kings Daughters) to prove you are the powerhouse. I believe that if you offer excellent service and provide great care, eventually the others will fall or at least not do enough business to make a difference.

I am under the firm belief that if The LEADER, CAPTAIN, or whatever you want to call him or her, were to treat people with respect and create an environment where people are happy and wake up everyday wanting to come to work you want have to worry about buying out the competition. The competition will either have to keep up or fall to the wayside.

It amazing how people go to school get a business degree and just think they know everything about running a business. Its not just that simple. YOU HAVE TO HAVE SOME SORT OF PEOPLE SKILLS (Which many people at DRMC do not have). IF you cant get along and make your employees happy whatever it takes you will never have a truly successful business. I can take a person that has no formal education in running anything, but if they are a people person or can take the time and effort to try to find ways to make there employees happy that business will run every other business of the same type in the ground.

Well thats enough about that.. I'm SCARED REALLY SCARED. The health care situation in greenville is scary, very scary. What do you do when u have doctors that are not formally trained in the setting they are working. ( for example Emergency Medicine). Thats frightening to me. I hope and pray everyday i do not have to be one of the ones that gets some of that substandard care.

The question i want answered is why did the experienced ER doctors leave in the first place, and why any experienced travel doctor says not NO to coming to DRMC but HELL NO... Is it that bad there.. Well i think so and many others think so... Like i have said earlier, the key to beating the competition and bringing in the money, (which im sure is the goal of DRMC) is to keep peace among the ranks.

If you cant trust your leader eventually the ship will be lost at sea because all the hands rowing will give up and the ship will go anyway it wants, (probably down). That has happened at DRMC, anybody and everybody that knew the way the ship handled, knew the ins and outs and had any type of knowledge is gone, (they have jumped shipped so to speak) so what do you do.

I dont know what needs to be done at DRMC, but i would guess the people need to storm the CAPTAIN'S Quarters and throw him overboard and start fresh. Thats what they did in the old days, you become stagnant and no good to anyone they replace you. I believe start at the top and work your way down, thats what needs to happen. Plain and simple.

Well in the words of the once famous FOREST GUMP "THATS ALL I'VE GOT TO SAY ABOUT THAT"

You are right "Forest". If a hospital provides excellent service and offers great care, it should not have to worry about competition. Actually, it should welcome it as a chance to "shine" in the light of others who compromise quality for profit.

The DRMC vs. KDH battle is one that goes back many years. When KDH was purchased by Community Health Systems, the battle really got fierce because unlike DRMC, KDH was now run by group of business professionals who specialized in developing small rural hospitals.

Over the period of 6 short years, they had rejuvenated the failing KDH into a quality health care facility with millions of dollars reinvested in physical improvements, technology and new physicians. The "little" hospital now became a great threat to DRMC who was consistently losing more and more patients, revenue and employees to KDH.

So, what to do? Healthy competition had ceased to be "healthy" for DRMC, who instead of investing money into patient care, simply added more layers of management and administration. Ray simply couldn't stand by and watch his (second) empire tumble. He had to act and act quickly... and improving the quality of patient care at DRMC would take far too long. So...

Ray's Epiphany: If you can't compete fairly in an open market, eliminate the competition...at any price (to the taxpayer). So, he duped five local bankers into loaning him twice what KDH was really worth, made a backdoor offer to CHS and they bit! Who wouldn't sell anything at a 100% profit?

Fast forward to present... after hemmoraging money for two years following the acquisition and local bankers getting a bit nervous about their "investments", Ray decided to "sell to the government" i.e. get a bail out loan from HUD. Surely, with all of the government's other boondoggles and frivolity, no one would object to dumping another $40 million into a dying hospital... well, that's what Ray thought anyway.

The last chapter of DRMC's saga has yet to be written, but I foresee a publication date in the very near future. As for Ray's "silent partner" in Uncle Sam... I wouldn't bet on him being silent much longer.

Forthright

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I see DRMC has changed their website. The physicians are now listed alphabetically and not by speciality. I guess this give the illusion that there are all kinds of specialists at DRMC. It would look bad if you click on a speciality, for example plastic surgery, and have nobody listed. I also see that some physicians that left Greenville are still listed as well as doctors from other towns who may not be readily available!

Anonymous said...

Can we go back to the Leland School District/Dr. Richards dilemma for a minute? The state superintendent is coming to the Leland schools this week because supposedly he wants to see how Leland is a level 4/5 when all the schools in the area have much lower scores. This brings up a very big question, how is it that Leland is able to get blood out of a turnip so to say. Are the children in Leland that much smarter? Are the teachers so much better? Is the superintendent the best in the land? Or is someone tampering with the tests? Could something be rotten in Leland? And could the district be paying her extra money to provide staff development services through her cosulting business that she should be doing as part of her job? Where does the money budgeted for staff development go? There haven't been any outside speakers that anyone can think of. And who makes the decision that she is THE ONLY EXPERT that can teach anything to teachers. She does! Is that unethical? And how is it that Leland staff memebers have been used to set up stuff for her outside consulting? Maybe the state superintendent should ask a few of these questions. And while he's at it he could ask her why she would want to be in a town where she doesn't live and no one wants her here. If nothing is going on wrong, then she want have a problem answering.