Senator Criticizes Chicago Hospital Administration Practices
Liz Perry for Leaders in Healthcare – September 9, 2008
Hospital administrators tackle a unique opportunity – continually increasing the level of care provided while maintaining or reducing costs. One American hospital is being questions for its methods of accomplishing this.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) is criticizing a University of Chicago Medical Center for diverting poor and uninsured patients with less serious injuries to other facilities to focus on treating the most challenging cases. Critics are concerned the hospital is doing so in an attempt to boost profits.
These efforts are part of an initiative launched three years ago, which educates the uninsured on how to get proper medical care without utilizing the emergency room. Originally launched as the South Side Health Collaborative (now called Urban Health Initiative), one of the effort’s original organizers was presidential nominee wife Michelle Obama, who served as vice president of external and community affairs at the time.
Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, recently requested documents on the medical center's initiative as part of an inquiry into whether non-profit organizations are lacking in their delivery of public service. The inquiry includes investigation of executive salaries, including Obama's, and executive hiring practices.
The medical center says the focus of the initiative is not making money, but directing more resources toward specialized care, training doctors and conducting cutting-edge research.
The Urban Health Initiative has redirected patients to other hospitals and about 20 clinics on the South Side, including the Access Community Health Network. The financial benefits of doing so are twofold: the government pays other facilities more money to treat Medicaid and other poor patients than if the U. of C. treated them, and it helps the high costs of being a teaching institution, which include training doctors and conducting research. The medical center saw a 5.2 percent operating profit margin through the first 11 months of its fiscal 2008, which ended June 30.
Medical center officials say referral facilities are benefitting as well, with the center providing millions of dollars in grants, staff time, and doctors. Some referrals are filling beds for low-risk baby deliveries, routine heart bypass surgeries and other procedures.