From an email:
What's happening...Paris healthcare ailing? How can that be? The Snooze usually portraits Essent as the second coming, our savior rising from the ashes of Christus....
Give me a break....
Essent was an opportunistic monolith with an over-inflated ego. It's what caused the Crossroads debacle, and from what stems our problem. Essent did poor research, "due diligence" as it were, and found themselves with a dichotomy: A purchase which doubled the number of beds in their system, yet had the weight to sink the corporation. The weight being what was needed in upgrades...and I don't mean paint and LCDs....
Essent should have passed us by...Muskogee would have been a far better choice as to plant and facility. Christus was letting us coast, as it were, and siphoning off what they could from Health Solutions, while putting almost nothing into the maintenance of the facilities.
What should have happened is a larger corporation, with deeper pockets, needed to take the bid. While we wouldn't have been the "showplace" (can you imagine what vanity that played to???), we wouldn't have been left out in the the cold--15 year old equipment that is the difference between your life and death???
What Essent has at this point, is a dilemma: Sell off Christus, which loses half their beds, and, what, $383 Million of their cash flow, or ride it down the drain..... You've all heard the commercials, "I've increased my cash flow to 2 gazillion a year! Ain't I special!" What counts is the bottom line: Reported income for the current period is $288k, the previous was $1.6M. You do the math: That is 18% of the income reported for the previous period. Yeah, real special....
While I keep hitting them with Crossroads, I feel that it was true to form: They held on to it because to dump it earlier would have been an admission of failure! Their very first hospital tanks! ...and after putting in $38 Million! Would the PRMC board have chosen them then?
Maybe Hud thought that Paris carried well with "French Lick", the original name for Nashville. Sorry, but the French nuns that helped establish St Joseph's would be rolling over in their graves, and Dr. McCuistion would be likewise. Neither would cherish the changes that have befallen us, their one probable point of agreement.
"Paris is not the regional medical hub that it once was, and steps must be taken to restore the medical community to its former glory and move it to new heights in the future...we are convinced Walters will be a shot in the arm for a regional medical community that shows some signs of ailing."
Interesting that the editorial tacitly assumes that there are major problems at PRMC that need correcting. Yet the Snooze has never printed a single news story that documents this decline in the hospital aside from the articles hand-written by Essent about the layoffs and about Andrew's firing (actually, they never even said he was fired, did they?)
What's happening...Paris healthcare ailing? How can that be? The Snooze usually portraits Essent as the second coming, our savior rising from the ashes of Christus....
Give me a break....
Essent was an opportunistic monolith with an over-inflated ego. It's what caused the Crossroads debacle, and from what stems our problem. Essent did poor research, "due diligence" as it were, and found themselves with a dichotomy: A purchase which doubled the number of beds in their system, yet had the weight to sink the corporation. The weight being what was needed in upgrades...and I don't mean paint and LCDs....
Essent should have passed us by...Muskogee would have been a far better choice as to plant and facility. Christus was letting us coast, as it were, and siphoning off what they could from Health Solutions, while putting almost nothing into the maintenance of the facilities.
What should have happened is a larger corporation, with deeper pockets, needed to take the bid. While we wouldn't have been the "showplace" (can you imagine what vanity that played to???), we wouldn't have been left out in the the cold--15 year old equipment that is the difference between your life and death???
What Essent has at this point, is a dilemma: Sell off Christus, which loses half their beds, and, what, $383 Million of their cash flow, or ride it down the drain..... You've all heard the commercials, "I've increased my cash flow to 2 gazillion a year! Ain't I special!" What counts is the bottom line: Reported income for the current period is $288k, the previous was $1.6M. You do the math: That is 18% of the income reported for the previous period. Yeah, real special....
While I keep hitting them with Crossroads, I feel that it was true to form: They held on to it because to dump it earlier would have been an admission of failure! Their very first hospital tanks! ...and after putting in $38 Million! Would the PRMC board have chosen them then?
Maybe Hud thought that Paris carried well with "French Lick", the original name for Nashville. Sorry, but the French nuns that helped establish St Joseph's would be rolling over in their graves, and Dr. McCuistion would be likewise. Neither would cherish the changes that have befallen us, their one probable point of agreement.
11 comments:
The Snooze is so preoccupied with tea-and-cookie news that to mention anything controversial would have been against their policy. The only reason the Shaquanda Cotton brouhaha got any mention was the large publicity it got from outside news media and the outcry from idiots on both sides of this tale. The Snooze was forced to actually report something outside, say, a Red Hat luncheon or a high school tiddlywinks tournament.
If the clowns at the local fishwrap could turn their J-school degrees loose & do some actual reporting on the goings-on at PRMC, they may actually become a publication worth the paper upon which it's printed.
Assuming, of course, they can get past the movers & shakers in town who, being responsible for the Essent debacle and not wishing to share any responsiblilty or blame for their actions, seem to repress the Snooze & keep it reporting about sunshine and puppies.
It may take an outside paper (hel-looooo, Dallas Morning News) to shine a light on this nest of cockroaches- they're not beholden to the Boss Hawgs of Paris one bit.
A story like this, while painful to a city already accused of being racist, shabby and goverened by inept council members (I believe the last part, but not the first two), would go a long way toward driving the cancer that is Essent from the area, and perhaps bring in proper management from outside. I would be against local management, since it's been proven that most of the local Powers That Be couldn't manage to hit their way out of a wet paper bag. And they were the folks who let Essent in the front door in the first place- we can't let that mistake happen again.
You think any of those folks have journalism degrees???
Just thought I would remind everybody on the run up to E$$ents takeover/takedown of our hospital.
They first make an inflated bid way beyond what HCA would even consider wise: This gets the Mafia boss of Christus major brownie points with the poor sisters of charity (who had about a billion in cash in the bank , and 2 or 3 billion in assets at the time), second he co-opts the chief of staff and a couple of other staff members hand picked by MONTY, by flying them to Nashville on a rented jet and feeding them a steak (they also took along Carol Grant to add the nursing angle to the mix.) Then the board was treated to a dog and pony show that only pressed home the fact that the sisters of poverty had to leave Paris because they weren't being supported by the local population, and as a result, they were losing money (their interest income alone in 2000 was over $85 million for 35 or so sisters of poverty!) Any staff member can tell you Christus was losing money because MONTY had his head up one of his employees dresses instead of administering the hospital.
When Essent took over they found hundreds of thousands of dollars in out dated meds, IV fluids. Heck Monty had never done an inventory of the hospital supplies and equipment! Monty was not charging for any supplies, only a daily room charge. The Nurse anesthesiologists did not even have tax id # , and the hospital never charged for the 60 or so epidurals they were doing each month in OB (a potential reimbursement of $300 to $600 for each one!) add that up over 700 deliveries in a year!
So my friends, Essent saw an incompetently managed hospital and an alienated staff looking for a savior (remember the firing of the 10 physicians in the primary care group shortly before the sale by the AL CAPONE leader of CHRISTUS CORPORATE) and like the python in the everglades that tried to eat an alligator, E$$ENT is finding out that this deal may indeed split its stomach not to mention its ego!
What's ahead for Paris? We still have excellent physicians and a pool of excellent nurses (they are currently working at home health or in Dallas) the sad truth is it has to get worse before it can get better. Essent has to go. The people in town have to be given a reason to come back to where they have always come for care, that will require a NEW HOSPITAL.
How we make that happen is the challenge that the citizens and medical community and industry have to all get serious and solve. Paris has to have a viable hospital to remain competitive in attracting and keeping jobs and tax base. It is time to demand change.
Are there any Marvin Gibbs or F.I Mc Clenneahans out there? Is there anyone interested in saving this great town from becoming a Bonham? If so please come forward to take the lead.....the anemic editorial in the snooze made me sad and sick, the publisher knows what's happening to the hospital and the most that he can muster in the way of reporting is an anemic "there seems to be a few problems at PRMC, let us hope that they will be fixed soon".
It reminds me of the First Mate on the Titanic's reputed comment to the captain when he awakened him after striking the iceberg, "We seem to have encountered some ice but I have taken measures to mitigate any difficulties".
LOL! The Snooze reminds me of a joke I read years ago...
The ghosts of Alexander the Great, Hitler and Napoleon are watching a military parade in Red Square (When USSR still a big bloc!) Alexander the Great says "If I had this many soldiers I could've conquered the known world!"
Hitler says "If I had these awesome nuclear missles I could've defeated the Allies and been ruler of the world!"
Napoleon perusing a copy of Pravda says "If I had a paper like this no one would've ever heard of Waterloo!"
For thos who read my opening post, it was tinged in sarcasm. Lots and lots of sarcasm. I don't know if the idjits at the Snooze have J-school degrees or even proper body temps of 98.6 degrees, it was more wishful thinking on my part.
How the one poster that wrote about MOnty (Python?) and the pre-Essent situation reminded me of reading about Germany and the Weimar Republic after WWI. Corrupt officials, hyperinflation, everything gone to hell in a leaky bucket.....no wonder Hitler and his policy of Naatinal Socialism sounded so good to the people- it would bring order, greatness, pride to the German nation, etc.
Well, we all know the outcome of that adventure, and all the sad, bloodthirsty behind-the-scenes affairs which came to light toward the end of the second World War.
I don;t know MOnty, nor would I know him from Adam's off-ox, since I was an old McCuistion hand that was gone while the sale by Presby/forced merger took place. But after readiong about this buffoon, I have little use for him, and lump him with the inept board that rubber-stamped the coming of Essent without lookink past their wallets and fat bellies.
Somewhere in a corner in the afterlife, Father Dubuis and Dr. L.P. McCuistion are shaking their heads sadly, looking at all they have worked for being laid waste by stupidity and corruption.
Oh yeah- those of you who don;t like what I've said about the board, Snooze, Essent, or anybody else, I'll be back in Texas in July. I'll be happy to back it up.
I took the liberty of writiing a letter to the Snooze, and all but daring them to print it. I doubt they will, but here is what I sent:
The recent editorial that ever-so-lightly touched on the conditions of healthcare in the Paris community just didn't settle well with me. As a former employee in the local healthcare area (and a current healthcare employee now), I've seen the decline of things in healthcare from the late 1990s until Essent Healthcare's takeover of the area hospital. Since Essent assumed control, employees have left in droves, patient census is down, tales have been told of the shabby conditions of the buildings, and CEOs have been changed at an alarming rate (3 in 3 years? Doesn't that sound a little suspicious to you?).
While I admittedly know nothing about the incoming CEO to Paris Regional Medical Center, I do know it's going to take more than a new CEO, some paint, fancy-Dan TVs and PR pap to make things better- it's going to take a desire by the healthcare leaders in Paris (not the board, but the folks who are in the trenches doing the actual work) to make the changes, even changing ownership if necessary.
I know the News has never published so much as a peep of negative news from the hospital, relying strictly on the press releases coming from Nashville, which is 578 miles away- how about really checking out what is happening in your own home town, for yourself?
Paris, Lamar County and the surrounding area deserve better than what they have now. And if this letter never sees the light of day in print, it'll tell me where the News' heart lies- and it won't be in Lamar County.
Like I said, its chances of seeing print are small to zip, but at least we'll know where the Snooze gets its marching orders from.
"We still have excellent physicians and a pool of excellent nurses (they are currently working at home health or in Dallas)"
Some of us still work at the hospital. Doing what we love for an administration that we can't stand.
RN
Good post 11:15. Who in healthcare in the Paris area would disagree?
See your letter in the Snooze? Ha.
Advertising revenue trumps the truth every time.
10:48
Ditto
Hmph! Has it occurred to the Snooze that if PRMC shuts down they get NO ad revenue? I got news for them. They can stand there and tell all the nasty things about PRMC they like, PRMC will still advertise with them. Where else can they go? Nashville?
Whatever happened to the TRUTH? Regardless of who looses the almighty dollar, if you don't have anything to hide, THEN PRINT IT ON THE FRONT PAGE!
HEY SNOOZE... the TRUTH SHALL SET US ALL FREE...if you would only print it!
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