Hospital ER Care in urban core of RI now inadequate? (Providence: closing, compensation)
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How did the ACA hurt Memorial? Please elaborate with some concrete evidence.
I do not have any data on Memorial. I didn't necessarily say (although it's entirely possible) that it hurt Memorial, but that it certainly "didn't help". It's pretty common knowledge that many elements of it such the reduced Medicaid reimbursements have been particularly hard on hospitals such as Memorial that serve large disadvantaged populations.
Last edited by massnative71; 01-11-2018 at 06:37 AM..
Brown University has now come out late against the proposal of Care New England to sell its remaining hospitals (Women & Infants/Butler/Kent) to Boston based Partners Healthcare. Making their own pitch with Prospect Medical Holdings. Concerned that procedures will be offloaded to Boston where Partners has many hospitals. Brown curiously never raised this issue when Care New England was doing this at Memorial. Wasn't it also bad for people in the area served by Memorial having many procedures moved out elsewhere?
Brown pitches deal for Care N.E.
Decries pending sale to Partners HealthCare as bad for Rhode Island
Thanks for sharing. Not a lot of detail with what they say below...Brown needs to elaborate why they think these things would happen.
“Doing so is likely to lead to specialty healthcare shifting to Massachusetts, impeding access to healthcare for Rhode Islanders and especially for members of the state’s under-served communities. It also would likely increase the cost of care and reduce the ability of Rhode Islanders — consumers, businesses, healthcare workers and policymakers — to have a voice in how our healthcare system works.”
“If the focal point of Rhode Island health care shifts to Boston, excellent physicians (many of them Brown-trained) could be less likely to choose Rhode Island as a place to practice,” Paxson wrote. “In addition, the full economic benefits of a strong local academic health system — one that brings in federal grants, generates spin-off companies and creates new jobs in Rhode Island — would be lost, perhaps forever.”
Every aspect of healthcare costs is expensive...medical school, doctor pay, medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, hospital renovations...it's analogous to higher education. The US health insurance market has allowed patients to be blind to how much this stuff costs and its gotten out of control. Until healthcare costs come down, Medicaid expansion or not, there will continue to be consolidation of hospitals because they simply can't survive in areas with poor demographics on their own. I believe Medicaid reimburses only about 70-80% of the cost of a patient and in poor areas Medicaid patients can make up over 30% of revenues.
I think it's a shame about Memorial but we should be grateful that Brown is now finally trying to do the right thing by RI.
They owe us that much as they continue to try to tear down our historic structures. Also, the "Brown Community" (especially people working at Brown and living in RI) surely wouldn't want to have to go to Boston for their health care- now would they?
Good answer. And if it was one or the other, goodbye Pawsox.
As an R.N. who did a good part of my training at Memorial and worked in their ER a few years after graduation I could not agree more!!!
The residents of Pawtucket and Rhode Island in general will suffer far more with the loss of Memorial than the loss of the Pawsox. The Providence ERs are already overburdened and to add now Pawtucket residents having to seek urgent and emergent care at the Providence hospitals that will only worsen an already bad situation. If you yourself from Providence and other parts of the state like myself who lives in Bristol and utilize Providence hospitals for emergency care, we best bring some yarn and knitting needs when we make our next ER visit because the time we will wait to be seen we will be able to knit an afgan.
It is happening again. I guess people in need of urgent care that live in the southern Blackstone Valley and E Providence will now have to go out of state for care since RI can't even take care of its own residents. The closure of Memorial Hospital was not good for the state.
01/17/18
Emergency rooms at Rhode Island Hospital and The Miriam Hospital are overwhelmed with flu patients and experiencing long wait times. Department of Health Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott said the state has been coordinating with local EMS chiefs and directing them to take patients to other area hospitals if possible.
This is a national problem. Hospitals in poor areas with mostly Medicaid and uninsured patients can't make a go of it. The ER problem is compounded by Medicaid people using the ER as a medical walk-in. If I have the flu, I'm not headed to the ER. My insurance company would refuse to pay. My first phone call is to my physician.... the one who doesn't take Medicaid patients because he loses money on every Medicaid case. If he's not around and I'm not handed off to an associate or NP, then I head to the urgent care facility that's in the same huge group practice complex. The system we have now is totally broken. Medicaid should be keeping people healthy and out of the ER. With private practice physicians increasingly refusing Medicaid because the compensation is lousy (and the patients have a stupidly high no-show rate which just adds to the lousy compensation), the ER gets crushed.
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