Watchdog Report: World-Class Healthcare
Clock is Ticking as Financial Crisis Looms for Jackson Memorial Hospital
Daniel A. Ricker
The long detailed story on the public Jackson Health System in The Miami Herald www.miamiherald.com today done by veteran and award winning reporter John Dorschner paints a almost $2 billion medical enterprise not only on life support, but may have run out of time. Jackson since 2000 has been bleeding red ink financially and the losses have risen sharply over the years with the first big hit coming in 2004, where the health trust lost $84 million with adjustments that went back to the late 1980s at the time. The public hospital system looking for its fourth president since 2003, the subject of a scathing Aug. 2010 state Grand Jury report that cut a wide and critical swath through the institution and how it is governed has been trying to right itself, and while progress in the hundreds of millions has been achieved, other areas continue to fiscally erode its cash on hand that has the institution blowing through $4.3 million in cash a day.
Now we have a governance task force meeting, and one PHT trustee Steven Nuell suggested in an editorial in The Herald today that a small group of five experts come together with a 30-day deadline and try to come up with financial solutions and would augment what the Task Force, created by the Miami-Dade Commission is doing right now. However, a July deadline is approaching and it is crunch time because if the trust cannot come up with essentially $100 million in cash at the time. It will affect the amount of federal draw down dollars the institution receives, at a time there is no other cash to infuse into the world class medical care facility, with two academic medical schools, and now roughly 11,100 employees, down from 12,500 two years ago.
Social medical triage is being looked at in the future and how that plays out will not be pretty, and while there is a major discussion on how to fund the PHT. Any changes of this nature are incredible complex and time consuming involving the state, county and city of Miami who actually owns the land the sprawling main campus is on and the University of Miami Miller Medical School is located after a over 50-year relationship with Jackson, where over 1,000 physicians get trained said UM President Dr. Donna Shalala recently at a public meeting. Florida International University’s fledgling medical school is also involved at Jackson, and the overall medical care is first class and the hospital recently was named number one by U.S. News & World Report in over 60 rankings of South Florida Hospitals, a real coup, yet the financial situation continues to deteriorate.
The Watchdog Report first started going to PHT meetings back in early 1998 and I watched this community jewel slowly get hammered by the issues facing it today, one financial drip at a time and is one of the reasons I have written well over a thousand weekly stories (including at least 75 of them being in The Herald when I was an independent weekly news columnist for the paper from 2003 to 2007. And I actually have had people email me asking why I wrote so much about JMH, if you can believe that now) since May 5, 2000, and for much of the time the WDR over the years has been the only consistent news source on a weekly basis trying to get the word out about the financial hemorrhaging going on at the public institution. A public institution once described in 2002 as “being on auto pilot,” when then President Ira Clark was first showing signs of being ill. But the health trust was not on autopilot and the half-cent countywide sales tax no longer could keep up like in the 1990s after the tax was passed in 1991 to be used only for Jackson, to provide trauma care and a host of other medical care to the needy.
Perhaps this situation should have been addressed back in 2004, but it wasn’t. Perhaps in 2008, but it wasn’t and with less than 90 days until July. I for one don’t have the answers (though there are many people that are absolutely sure they know what needs to be done) to this incredible complex and vexing problem. But the fact remains the financial clock is ticking and there is more than a sense of urgency and concern. Miami-Dade’s elected leaders, community leaders and the community as a whole must face reality that not only is the current system not working and unsustainable. We collectively must act now for this is a living and breathing enterprise, and if there ever was a time to push local politics aside and stick to the task at hand of keeping Jackson functioning. It is now.
Category: CITY, SPEAK YOUR MIND
