Catholic Health Initiatives Loses $198 Million in First Quarter.

Kentucky operations show improvement.

CHI’s corporate first quarter financial update for the months July through September of 2014 was made public last Friday. The report was not good. There was a loss in patient care services of $122 Million that increased to $132 Million after “restructuring, impairment and other losses’” and was magnified further by non-operating losses to a total loss of $198 Million. This represents 5.4% of total operating revenues and is therefore meaningful. In the same quarter last year, there was a profit of $401 Million— a $599 Million swing in the wrong direction.

Last year CHI’s KentuckyOne operation was generating the greatest losses for the organization. This year its first quarter results showed a positive $1.7 Million profit. Of course, this is before “restructuring” or covering its share of national non-operating losses. I think it is safe to assume that KentuckyOne Health and any other Kentucky operations were paying out more money than they were bringing in. The KentuckyOne region remains at the bottom of the list of CHI regions in terms of operating income. Kentucky contributes substantial operating revenues, but its operating earnings margin is only 0.3% before all the adjustments. Continue reading “Catholic Health Initiatives Loses $198 Million in First Quarter.”

Progress Report and Recent User Improvements to KHPI Policy Blog.

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History of Health Policy Blog.
Although since the 1990s I had been informally using the name Kentucky Health Policy Institute for my first health policy research efforts, I registered the name as a Kentucky non-profit corporation in 2005. My first public internet presence was a relatively crude website in early 2007. Once I added a blog function to present material, I did very little with the khpi.org homepage that functions today only to hold “About Us” material and a Vision for Healthcare that I wrote in 1997 that still drives my thinking today. The old homepage also contains a button to enable PayPal contributions in support of our initiatives. (Except for my own initial “test” contribution, no one else has done so!) Continue reading “Progress Report and Recent User Improvements to KHPI Policy Blog.”

More Layoffs In Store for Catholic Health Initiatives.

  Kentucky unlikely to be spared.

Tamara Chuang of the Denver Post reported yesterday of an announcement by CHI confirming the 1500 additional job cuts planned for January 2015. Laura Ungar of our own Courier-Journal was ahead of the game in reporting this considerable reduction.

From Denver: “As a result of lower-than-expected operating and financial performance in the first quarter of the 2015 fiscal year, Catholic Health Initiatives and its market organizations will take action to reduce expenses across the system,” said spokesman Michael Romano. “The losses were due to a number of external and internal factors, including reduced utilization of services.”

The positions to be cut will be announced in mid-January are said to focus on administrative and support staff and to affect the entire national enterprise. Given that KentuckyOne Health is one of the larger of CHI’s regional operations and continues to produce the largest financial losses, it must be assumed that additional job cuts will follow the 500 or so lost last March in Kentucky.

This unfortunate news is not a complete surprise. CHI’s financial report for FY 2014 released last month showed a slowing of recent losses, but KentuckyOne was the only region of CHI losing money.  The profit from operations nationwide was razor-thin.  I am unaware of how the earlier job cuts were spread out around the state, but I am told that the cuts hurt, and even led to decreased clinical capacity in some facilities. The required formal financial report for the first quarter of FU 2015 will not be available until the end of the month. It should contain more specifics.

Peter Hasselbacher, MD
President, KHPI
December 7, 2014

Ebola Treatment Centers Established Nationally.

No Centers designated in Kentucky.

Earlier this week, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that 35 U.S. hospitals have been designated as Ebola Treatment Centers. More are said to be announced soon. These hospitals were designated by state or local public health officials as having both the physical and staffing capability to care for these very ill patients. The CDC has published interim guidance outlining the capabilities every Ebola treatment center should have. They are pretty rigorous. Certainly not every hospital is up to the clinical demands, including the many Medicare Critical Access Hospitals in rural or small population centers that must by regulation transfer their sicker patients elsewhere. [The CDC website provides an excellent source of information about Ebola virus disease for professionals and laypeople alike.]

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Continue reading “Ebola Treatment Centers Established Nationally.”