Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Just think how far a really tiny slice of $200+ million would go...

The high cost
Danville Register and Bee
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The Free Clinic of Danville has always relied on caring volunteers from the medical community to help people who can’t afford health care. Washington politicians may debate the health care issue, but at the corner of Ridge and Patton streets, good people work to help those who need medical treatment they can’t afford.
Recently, though, the Free Clinic struggled to decide what to do with a grant that in the recent past had allowed it to treat more people.
The Virginia Health Care Foundation awarded a $39,375 grant to the clinic to pay one-third of the cost of a nurse practitioner.
“The grant allowed us to significantly increase the services provided to the community and increased the number of patients we saw by approximately three times,” Brent Saunders, president of the Free Clinic’s board, said late last month. “However, the prescription costs rose significantly and with the increasing salary we were responsible for, it was a perfect storm brewing.”
That “perfect storm” was the clinic’s costs, which were rising beyond what it could afford on its budget. When the last nurse practitioner left in August, the position was left vacant. It will likely stay that way, and for good reason.
“The board feels that sustained funding for the full-time nurse practitioner position is needed in order to assure the long-term financial viability of the clinic,” Saunders said.
That’s the only way to survive in today’s health care economy, even if it means not hiring someone who could help treat more sick people in this community.
In the short term, many of those people are being hurt or, at the very least, inconvenienced. But if the Free Clinic can’t survive financially, more of them will be hurt.
One possible solution would be to seek a steady source of money from the Danville Regional Foundation, the group formed with the proceeds from the sale of Danville Regional Medical Center. With enough money from the foundation, the Free Clinic could afford to not only pay the nurse practitioner’s salary, but cover the rising costs of medical supplies and prescription drugs.
This community’s most vulnerable residents need this problem solved. Anything that can help the Free Clinic of Danville treat more patients is going to be a good thing.

64 comments:

Anonymous said...

"One possible solution would be to seek a steady source of money from the Danville Regional Foundation."

Thats probably too practical, too logical, and too in keeping with the proposed mission of the foundation. How can any of the Bank Boys get any recognition for that? Also, since "community center" or "Institute" isn't part of the name it seems unlikely.
Hate to seem negative but their history has me a bit gun shy at being optomistic about anything they might touch.

Anonymous said...

Agreed, I'm still amazed that Davenport was able to get the foundation to pay to clean up his property in Chatham. Had he been a "REAL" benevolent sort of person, he would have paid to clean up his own mess before donating it to the community. Imagine how much more of a building or budget the new Chatham Community Center would have if all that money hadn't been spent cleaning up the environmental problems.

Anonymous said...

Just think how far a quality affiliation with a non profit teaching institution had gone , and how much further it could have gone , until it was destroyed by five greedy, backward thinking, shortsighted,unethical confidence tricksters. A real shame to lose such a positive future as with Duke or any other Non profit teaching facility. No chance for a four year degree RN school , PA school, MSN, and maybe even an MD satelite, shamed as danville usually is in the eyes of the nation.

200 million would have been a drop in a bucket compared to the above .
It's gone now.
History has shown us what the "leaders" of danville have done over the decades, absolutely NOTHING.

Anonymous said...

This is one of the few good ideas I've heard lately: Using DRMC money on healthcare for the community. This should have been #1 on the foundation's priority list.

Anonymous said...

It was a conflict of interest for him to ever even touch the money.
But ethics is a new word apparently.

Anonymous said...

"Using DRMC money on healthcare for the community. This should have been #1....."

Back when it was a hospital, it was called indigent care, real non profit hospitals that care about the community do this.

Anonymous said...

BUT remember theres no "profit" in indigent care.

Anonymous said...

Ha, does that mean we should consider all of the "o"'s indigents? They provide no real service but come at a huge cost.

Anonymous said...

Has anyone asked them? After all, what ARE they doing with the money? Do you think that they could sleep at night knowing that there are children going without healthcare?
Ask them specifically for the needs, explaining what it would be used for. Show them photos of some of the patients. Appeal to their emotional side. Perhaps also if there was a very small co-pay by the patients or their parents/guardians using the facility, the clinic would show responsible use of the healthcare facility. (The things that people are involved in paying for, helps involve them in its progressive growth)
If something is completely free, with no commitment whatsoever, it is sometimes deemed worthless-and can be abused or taken advantage of-and can also result in being unvalued. If the cost of an item or service is compiled from coordinated sources, the viability of the item is valued higher, used more effectively, supported by more interests, and in effect maintained by more interests. It is more of a team approach which includes a pro-rated use of available funding. Thus, an overall ownership of the service rendered could result in a joint effort of the ongoing quality of the service, and the results could very well be progressive growth through joint ownership.

Anonymous said...

"Agreed, I'm still amazed that Davenport was able to get the foundation to pay to clean up his property in Chatham. Had he been a "REAL" benevolent sort of person, he would have paid to clean up his own mess before donating it to the community. Imagine how much more of a building or budget the new Chatham Community Center would have if all that money hadn't been spent cleaning up the environmental problems."

October 17, 2007 10:46:00 AM EST

Any truth to the rumor that Davenport didn't really "donate" the land? I've heard it will revert back to him at some point. Pretty clever if you ask me...let someone else use your property for a while, clean up an environmental disaster, improve it and put a nice building on it, and you eventually get to keep it all. Lord I hope what I just typed isn't true.

Anonymous said...

Somebody needs to splain to those pharmacy companies that if they'd stop giving half of their stuff away to doctors (who get kicked back) that a possible "side-effect" might be "withdrawel" of revenue! Besides who needs some of this junk, makes a lot of us sick; what are we guinea pigs?

Anonymous said...

You can be absolutely certain that a money-grubber like Davenport would NEVER construct that building across from his office WITHOUT absolutely locking in his own interests. Don't you folks understand? Generosity is just another game to people like him. They are frauds in all they do. And they prove it--day after day.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to get into this, but your misunderstanding of the Danville Regional Foundation is laughable were it not so absurd.

Remember, Lifepoint paid this community $200,000,000 for our hospital. We got the money, and they got the hospital.

But remember this also: We still have a perfectly good hospital AND we have the money. In other words, we ate our cake and still have it. Pretty nifty, wouldn't you say?

Now, what could be sillier than to have Danville Regional Foundation begin to pour our hospital money into healthcare? Remember folks, you have been paid for the hospital, and the foundation has hired experts to figure out how to make the money do the most good in the community.

You cannot have it both ways. Your community got the money, and you still have a hospital.

I hope that clarifies the role of the Foundation.

Anonymous said...

"We still have a perfectly good hospital AND we have the money."

What part of the last two years have you missed, you obviously don't work there or haven't beena patient there lately.

"the foundation has hired experts to figure out how to make the money do the most good in the community."
The "foundation" recruited those whom they interviewed to do their bidding , fact. The most good would have been to escalate the affiliation with a non profit teaching facility, all of which the "experts" turned down due to lack of knowledge of the state of healthcare in the US. The family of hospitals spawned from the originators of HCA and it's parent have been an albatross to the entire US and US government but due to the envolvement of the family that started this mess, no prosecution to any useful( more than a few million dollars) has been succesful, but once again danville's leaders greed won out.

Anonymous said...

"You cannot have it both ways."

Danville didn't ask to have it this way, 5 greedy ignorant crooks did.

Anonymous said...

I'm afraid you dissenters had your chance and blew it. Or were out-smarted, or whatever. I agree with the poster: We ate our cake and still have it. That's a trick.

Anonymous said...

It is nice to see the tide turning to reality instead of fantasy. You guys on this Blog lost big-time, and the sooner you acknowledge this, the closer you are to making a positive impact on your community instead of a negative impact. If you had one-half the financial skills of Mr. Davenport, you would be a giant.

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Anonymous said...

Too funny....and I disagree the folks on this blog "blew it". A lot of what has been accomplished in this city regarding the poor poor performance of Lifepoint was due to the issues brought forth on this blog. The only place I feel it failed was in smoking out the Fab 5 and having them speak to the issues they created. If I had been a part of the sale my integrity would have caused me to step forward LONG before now and at least reveal what our thought process was. Everyone is entitled to make a mistake or a bad decision. When it becomes apparent a bad decision was made though, it's important to speak out with the reasoning behind it and a possible conclusion as to why it went wrong. To remain silent and act as if everything worked out for the best shows a lack of integrity and gives the impression you have something to hide. Worse yet is when you PROFIT from the decision and still refuse to talk about it.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

"You guys on this Blog lost big-time,"
We didn't lose we (can and have) left/leave.
The one's who lost are the citizens of Danville who built a good facility and had five thieves take it from them and disappear in the same darkness the sale was conducted under, the other losers are the ones to ignorant to see what was lost.
"If you had one-half the financial skills of Mr. Davenport, you would be a giant."
If you consider immoral reckless endangerment of an entire socioeconomic structure and peoples lives for your own personal gain a giant you're correct.
The only reason people like that are "giants" is because they have NO morals.
If you consider making our own way while actually contributing to society and not sucking the life out of it a giant I can name you several, a clue none of the fab 5 and very very few of the past 5-7 decades of "leaders" in this town.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

I inquired about hospitalists on the DRMC website and received the following response that seems very sensible to me:

Thanks so much for your question. Hospitalists are fully-trained doctors who have completed medical school and residency training and graduate with degrees in Internal Medicine or Family Practice. Most are university-trained doctors who have recently completed and are very familiar with hospital-based care. Others are doctors who have been in traditional-based medical practices who decide to change to hospital-based care exclusively. Hospitalists do not perform surgery, and the presence of hospitalists has in fact contributed to reduced backlogs in the Emergency Department by getting admitted patients to the nursing units, freeing up space in the ED. This has helped reduce the total treatment time in the ED by about 30 percent over the last year.

The program, which was initially recommended by physicians in 2004 and actually began in 2006, currently has 4 full-time and 8 part-time physicians who supply 24/7 coverage. The goal is to have 7-8 full-time hospitalists and less part-time workers. Dr. Fran DeChurch has been hired to start working at DRMC as the director of the program, and she begins Oct. 30. She is a nationally-known and respected hospitalist leader with more than 15 years of hospitalist experience and 8 years of experience as a hospitalist program director.

The full-time hospitalists are listed on the DRMC website.

Anonymous said...

"and the presence of hospitalists has in fact contributed to reduced backlogs in the Emergency Department by getting admitted patients to the nursing units,"
DOesn't work when there still is not enough staff to take care of the patients , it just makes the ratios go up faster.And since lifepoint has no interest in creating safer ratios........

"who supply 24/7 coverage"

They are NOT in the hospital 24/7 and they will not treat patients when covering since they haven't done rounds and aren't familiar with them,has become a huge problem.
You can however look up any physician on the Virginia board of medicine website, all you need is physician's name.

Anonymous said...

Dr. Nazmul is the only hospitalist that is still at the hospital from the ones listed on the website. The entire list of physicians is very out of date!

Anonymous said...

Can someone help us find the list of hospitalists on the DRMC web page? We can't find it. We would like to have a look before going in.

Anonymous said...

There is not a list of hospitalist there. If you look at the doctor's names they are mixed in but they are not current so does no good to look.

Anonymous said...

Fahmi
Ali
Nazmul
Jain
Ayichew
Al-Jassar

Anonymous said...

Is this a joke????? Any of them speak English????? I've heard this before and never beoieved it--and still don't. This blog has gotten very goofy.

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Anonymous said...

YOU IDIOTS ! Do they speak English? Of course they do and a few speak up to 4 other languages fluently.

Anonymous said...

(YOU IDIOTS ! Do they speak English? Of course they do and a few speak up to 4 other languages fluently.)

AGREE

Anonymous said...

Dr. Fran DeChurch is married to Dr. Hugh Fraser who recently joined the local pathology group. They are long time residents of the Reidsville, NC area. Hopefullly she will provide the hospitalist program with the much needed leadership that has so far been lacking.

Hospitalists oversee patients admitted to the hospital who do not have a primary care physician (unassigned patients). In the past, these patients were admitted by the local physicians who were assigned them on a rotating basis from the emergency room. Hospitalists also supervise the care of patients who have doctors that do not maintain admitting privileges at the hospital (Piedmont Internal Medicine, Internal Medicine Assoc., Piedmont Primecare, etc). As it has been mentioned before, if more local physicians give up admitting privileges and keep only consulting privileges due to their frustrations with DRMC/LifePoint then the hospitalist program better be first rate or it will be unable to handle all the patients being admitted to the hopsital.

Lets also stop slamming physicians with foreign names. The last time I checked, the USA is a melting pot of people. Not every is a descendant of a pilgrim who arrived on the Mayflower. Many people with foreign names were born in the USA. Also remember that any foreign-born doctor who is now practicing here had to have the qualifications to receive a medical license in the USA. While many foreign-born physicians attended medical school in their home countries, they completed their residency programs at hospitals here in the states and are board certified in their area of medicine/surgery through examinations taken in the USA.

Remember this blog is a wonderful means of communication and discussion. Lets keep it on an intelligent level and out of the gutter.

Anonymous said...

Now there's a thought.

Anonymous said...

They do not articulate in English very well.Also, there are glaring cultural slants toward female nurses.
The program already cannot handle the load due to :
Obviously no orientation to the hospital, the EMS services and city/county demographics.
No familiarity with the lack of 24 Hr. services provided by lifepoint and the lack of nurses and supplies provided by the same.
Not sharing rounds information with the oncoming shift(s).
Not available immediately 24/7.
A well trained anybody could admit and then consult everyone.
And the name Ayichew is correct.
I suspect no native born MD's would jeopardize themselves just to pay off their loans by working for lifepoint.Actually we know this to be the case.

Anonymous said...

I would like to know why these derogatory comments aren't being removed by the webmaster. I mean several comments were removed for slamming an ICU coworker, but none have been removed when slamming the hospitalists because of their nationality.
This blog is really turning out to be biased and unethical. At once, it was nice vent session but it turned cruel recently.

Anonymous said...

And irinically, its the same posters...its just an accumulation of their 18th century small town backward stupidity. And yikes, they might be the ones takling care of my family at the hospital.

Anonymous said...

No stabs , just the truth.
Ethics and morals do not have to be disregarded for progress .
It's lifepoints doings, not these physicians , really, they did pass the USMLE.

Anonymous said...

To the PR person hired to cover lifepts' a---s: It is not your misspelling that can make you look like you are from here. It is your choice of words that gives you away as being an outsider.

Anonymous said...

What do Lifepoint and a foreign hospitalist have in common? They are both only in it for the money.
Regards of how many languages they speak, aren't their medical educations inferior to USA's? I have worked with them and alot of them do not like women or Americans but they sure know how to work the "system".

Anonymous said...

So tell me are the hospitalist now responding to cardiac arrests? They have been reluctant to in the past much to the joy of the nursing staff as few are ACLS/PALS certified. Any? And can you please tell me about thier profressional certifications? Where they were trained etc? How come this informaiton is so hard to find?

I don't have a problem with foreign born physicians or even foreign trained but I do want to know their credentials beyond the fact they are an MD. Where did they complete their residencies and in what field. Can they effectively communicate with the hospital staff, other physicians, patients etc. From what I have seen they can't effectively communicate, respond to their pages when they feel like it and know little about the community or hospital functions. And don't depend upon them in an emergent situation. How is this effective? How is this quality?

Anonymous said...

"So tell me are the hospitalist now responding to cardiac arrests?"
Yes, usually 10 minutes or more into it, and as soon as they arrive all of the structure and organization that has taken place goes to hell.
Communication - gone
"Current" ACLS - ignored
USELESS tests - ordered(while the code is being worked)
Pages to other MD's for guidance - numerous,
Not having them there - PRICELESS

Anonymous said...

Dr. Gerena and Dr. Harris both work as hospitalist. They are very good physicians, if you can ignore Dr. Gerena's personality. I hope that if I ever come in as a patient they are on call! I don't think the other hospitalist are as bad as the posters make them sound although some are most definitely better than others.

Anonymous said...

All these comments about the hospitalist because they are employed by lifepoint??? I am sure if they were in a private group you and others won’t make these false comments!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Abolutely true! Lifepoint bashing is getting old. If people would spend half as much time trying to make DRMC a better place as they do tearing it down things would improve quickly.

Anonymous said...

"All these comments about the hospitalist because they are employed by lifepoint??? I am sure if they were in a private group you and others won’t make these false comments!"
No, these statements are made of truth.And they are NOT false.

"Dr. Gerena and Dr. Harris both work as hospitalist"
Dr. Gerena is an independant Inf. Disease MD.
Dr. Harris is in a group.
Dr. Waters is in a group.
They only "cover" occasionally for the hospitalists.

Anonymous said...

FYI Harris, Gerena, and Waters are doing a hospitalist job as a part time employee employed by LifePoint.

Anonymous said...

So many words from people who know so little. And no, I'm not some p-r type covering for Lifepoint...the typo was an honest mistake. Wish I were as perfect as you. I'm just a local who has decided it can't be as bad as you all describe. I had some tests recently and expected the worst...and was pleased with the care.

Anonymous said...

Dr. Gerena is an independant Inf. Disease MD.
Dr. Harris is in a group.
Dr. Waters is in a group.

Anonymous said...

Whenever ANY MD works as a hospitalist, he/she is paid by LifePoint( Trivedi, Harris,Thompson,Shah, etc).
Dr Gerena and Dr Waters are LifePoint employees anyway.
Too, if you didn't know, Drs. Singer & Murphy's practice is owned by LifePoint.

Anonymous said...

So if the neurosurgery doesn't pan out, then there is always a chance to be a hospitalist.

Anonymous said...

That's kinda funny, Dr. Singer openly despises the hospitalists.

Anonymous said...

Well, I openly despise Joel.

--Warren

Anonymous said...

Most RN's do to.
Jay

Anonymous said...

Can't believe no can focus on the fact that lifepoint is turning DRMC into a Nursing home .
Or size is greatly reduced
4 surgeons leaving anesthesia jobs unable to be filled.
No replacement MD's for the openings or to grow the facility , it's all so sad.
RN's still leaving .
Jay

Anonymous said...

How many hearts are being completed now per week? This was hte servic eline identified to SAVE this organization? How are we doing?

As for the hospitalists at codes, I have seen them in action. Again how many of them have ocmpleted ACLS training? The one I saw had no clue and did little to assist. Thank god for the code team.

Anonymous said...

Heart surgeries vary from week to week. Sometimes he does 3-4 in one week, sometimes only one or less.

--Warren

Anonymous said...

Supposedly they went to ACLS under the new protocols . But evidently they failed since I have yet to see them follow the same ACLS that we all went to and have been going to for years and years and thousands of codes.

Anonymous said...

If you are Dr. Singer's patient you won't hate him. He treats his patients well. I know because I am one and thankful for his skills.

Anonymous said...

Oh don't get us wrong he is an excellent Physician. No doubt .
But part of being an outstanding physician is not being an ass(proper use) to the people that help provide the extension of that care.

sentinel event said...

The Foundation could support the Free Clinic

To the editor:
I propose that the Danville Regional Foundation fully fund the Free Clinic of Danville so the clinic’s patients who are unemployed or without any type of health insurance have the certainty of receiving health care when needed on a non-emergency basis.
Prevention is the key that fits most every lock. Once a patient reaches a certain point of un-health, it is very difficult to climb out of that hole. The entire family is affected, and one thing after another seems to occur before they are able to get that first one thing under control. When that happens, their job often does not withstand prolonged or recurrent sick days.
But funding the Free Clinic with money from the Danville Regional Foundation also helps children, and healthy children have a head start on becoming healthy, productive adults.
I truly believe this would benefit the health and welfare of every person in our region because we would become a healthier community. And what a benevolent effort by the Foundation.

LEA