A hospital administration serious about maintaining financial stability often has to make difficult decisions, so Erlanger Health System's call earlier this week to fire the four top administrators at its Southside and Dodson Avenue community health centers only makes sense.
Erlanger, the city's oldest hospital which has turned around its bottom line in the last 18 months, could not afford to have its health centers lose $2.3 million as they did in the fiscal year that ended June 30.
In the last year, although the centers had a $2.3 million grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the hospital had to pump in $1.5 million to shore up operations.
Erlanger officials said the centers have been troubled for at least the last four and a half years.
To remedy that, Erlanger Chief Executive Officer Kevin Spiegel said the governance and management of the centers had to be changed. To do so, the hospital dissolved its currently required HRSA community board that served as its co-applicant for HRSA grants. The hospital is interested in retaining federal funding for the centers, but that may be determined by governance and management decisions the hospital makes going forward.
Despite the turmoil, services were not interrupted.
Indeed, Spiegel said the hospital intends to improve services there, expanding primary health care, adding school and pediatric programs, improving educational outreach, increasing dental services and giving patients wider access to doctors within Erlanger's primary care network.
Since Erlanger is a public hospital, its desire to serve the uninsured and underinsured is part of its mission, but it's just as important for the health system not to return to its roller-coaster years of black ink, then red ink.