(Register & Bee)
To the editor:
After the last letter I wrote concerning our LifePoint hospital, I was summoned to a small meeting in Danville with William Carpenter, the CEO from Tennessee, as well as the local CEO, Art Doloresco, and former local CEO Jess Judy. I understand they held a number of such meetings aimed at putting out the fires of discontent.
In my group, they offered urgent promises about fixing the things wrong at LifePoint’s Danville Regional Medical Center and working hard to win the shattered confidence of the community. I try always to assume the best about people, so I accepted their promises and waited.That was two months ago, on Jan. 22. What’s happened since then?The main thing that has happened is that Danville Regional, after enjoying decades of top ratings (and even commendations) from the accreditation panels of the Joint Commission, has in effect been placed on probation. Under LifePoint management, Danville Regional is now operating under a “preliminary denial of accreditation.”
It is nothing short of a disgrace.
How can this be, when I heard the CEO of this $2 billion hospital chain sit and state that everything possible was being done to fix the problems? His underlings sat there and nodded in agreement. How can things be so horribly wrong when they had been so very right? Keep in mind that Danville Regional was at the top of its game when LifePoint bought it less than two years ago.
To say the least, my confidence is shaken after personally listening to such bold assurances two months ago. The men I met with made a big point of insisting that Danville Regional is as much our community hospital as it was before it was sold to LifePoint. But do they mean what they say? It’s as if they do not understand one of the basics we all learn in our life experiences - we can never fix our problems until we admit we have them.
The first thing LifePoint should do is make public the Joint Commission report, including details about the areas of the hospital that flunked the inspection. Doloresco called those points of failure “a private matter between me, the hospital and the commission,” according to a news story. Such an arrogant statement has no place at the table.
As a matter of public health and safety, we at least deserve to know the areas of the hospital that are in trouble. With that information, the public can make more informed decisions about which services are safe at Danville Regional.
Meanwhile, it is high time for the men who secretly sold our hospital and got us into this situation to come forward with our $200 million and help us find a solution.
COY HARVILLE
Danville
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19 comments:
This guy is Chairman of the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors. We need to get him to move to Danville and run for City Council. It is incredible that our so-called leadership seems too scared of the Bank Boys to speak up in such a strong and level-headed fashion. Thank you, Mr. Harville!
Coy, you must be a skilled carpenter because you hit the nail right square on the head!! Thank you for standing up for the people.Dixie Doss
I think Coy Harville is running for SOMETHING--but its not City Council.
Thanks Sherlock!
Of course Coy Harville running for something....his Supervisor's position from Westover. And God bless him. A smart man who has the courage to speak out will get my vote every time.
Here it goes again....that Harville guy blowing the " horn of justice" as a political stepping stone to..... somewhere.
Mr BlowHard find a real cause
If you don't think healthcare in our community is a "real cause," then you must be one of the rich people who can ride down to Duke whenever you want to. If you are an ordinary citizen who thinks healthcare is not a "real cause," then you should crawl back in your hole and stay there.
I have noticed that whenever someone speaks out to the public against lifepoint or the boys at the bank, someone posts sarcastic comments at around 4:00 - 5:00 am on this blog. Either you have a guilty conscious about the sale and can't sleep or you need to get up from that chair and help some patients.
Could be one of the Bank Boys himself. They have to get up very early to start counting our money.
If DRMC was doing so well 2.5 years go, why was it losing money and need to sell? Just curious.
at the time of the sale DRMC was not in the red. we were in the black and had one of the top ratings from the banking world. we could afford to give away a couple of millon a year to those who could not or would not pay their medical bills.
plase have your facts straight before posting a comment.
Danville Regional Health System had an A+ rating with Standard & Poors. The organization was doing well financially, that's why the Bank Boys got so much money.
It appears as though our woes have made it all the way to Colorado to physicians there fed up with LifePoint also.
From a yahoo financial blog:
We docs along the Colorado River in the former Brim and Province hospitals used to go on a fishin' trip every year and swap tales about how to treat patients better, etc. We used to have a good ol' time until the late summer of 2000 when Marty Rash, John Rutledge and the gang from the fishin'hole accused the doctors from Lake Havasu of causing Province to miss earnings estimates by taking vacation when the truth was that bad debt and increasing supply costs in same store hospitals were the real negative contributors to earnings. We had scheduled our procedures around our vacation and there was no negative effect on earnings, but Ol' Marty and John went ahead and spun that fish tale and "The Street" bit on that story with more gusto than a channel catfish on a trot line! This encouraged John Rutledge to start a real estate company that acquired significant holdings in a county in South Carolina that Province decided to build a hospital in on land he owned! Again, "The Street" bought this hook, line and sinker! Not one analyst did any homework or questioned the ethics of the transaction or the ulterior motives behind the construction of the hospital. As everyone now knows, the county in South Carolina where Rutledge and Rash made another fortune besides the one made from "cookin' the books" is one of the poorest counties in America and there is no hope of the hospital ever turning a profit! I decided to go do surgeries in their new hospital in AZ that was completed in November. I kept providing my information to hospital administration so a Medicare provider number could be obtained and didn't get an answer to what progress was being made on securing the provider number. When I followed up on the status of the provider number, I was told "Don't Worry, Be Happy"! When I reported this to the director of physician relations for Lifepoint, he told me to go fishin' again because Ken, Marty, John and Slipkovitch had figured this scam out during a hunting trip and they had finally bagged "the big bear"! Finally, I heard from some fellow physicians at Danville, VA that LPNT tried to force policies and procedures that would compromise the quality of care delivered to patients and turn the operating rooms into "sweat shops" were being rammed down the throats of the medical staff. LPNT always denies this is the case, but that is just another fish tale! The question that needs to be asked and answered is when will Marty, John, Ken and Slipkovitch be investigated, exposed indicted, tried and convicted of the manipulation, misrepresentations and fraud that has been perpetuated. In summation, this ranks as "The Biggest Healthcare Fish Tale Of Them All"!
Partial excerpt from:
http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/story.cms?id=6122
An article about a recent $6.4B hospital acquisition.
“Like HCA, private equity firms viewed Triad as a strong cash generator but saw it as undervalued on the public market,” he said. “Given the cash flows generated by some of these hospital chains, the private equity funds see opportunities to cut costs and improve operations without the overhang of being a publicly traded company.”
However, cutting overhead is often a challenge in hospitals, which are highly regulated and require so much labor.
“The real question is whether these hospitals can cut costs and maintain quality of care,” Williams said. “Triad was viewed as a target that had room to trim overhead.”
Other healthcare companies could be takeover targets. Williams and Sheryl Skolnick, senior vice president of CRT Capital, list LifePoint Hospitals Inc. and Community Health Systems Inc. as possible targets. Skolnick says Universal Health Services Inc. is another candidate.
I recently had the opportunity to talk to staff from one of the Level I trauma/tertiary care/ referral centers that Danville often utilizes when transfering critically ill patients. I mentioned Danville and the hospital's current sticky situation and she stated that she had read about that in that area's paper. Other staff took interest and asked what areas were problems. I replied that I did not know, because that information was not given to the community and repeated the CEO's statement to the paper. This staff memeber promptly started listing a couple of areas she knew of. I have been trying to find the article she was referring to and have not succeeded thus far. She did not remember exactly what the article said but here are some things she threw out: expired medications/equipment and there were some issues with the nursing units (she thought cleanliness).
So why is it that none of the articles from the Danville Register & Bee on "Preliminary Denial of Accreditation" make it to the Topix site that highlights Lifepoint News articles?
Just another example of bad corporate medicine. I've published an article on my blog on this tragedy:
http://legalmedicine.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the article and the link, Dan.
maybe Coy can look into the habits of docnabx???
somebody needs to watch him - he needs to be reeled in like a big carp and kept away from others
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