Healing The Hospitals

Hospitals are the latest casualties of the economic crisis. As their investment incomes tumble, hospitals' already stretched operating budgets are being squeezed even further. At the same time, they must treat an increasing number of patients who are uninsured or cannot pay their medical bills; recent Obama administration estimates reveal that crushing health care costs trigger a personal bankruptcy every 30 seconds.

So it's not surprising that more than half of the nation's hospitals are operating in the red, according to a recent Thomson Reuters study. Credit rating agencies are downgrading hospitals. Moody's and Fitch recently changed the outlook for the not-for-profit hospital sector from stable to negative. And across the country, hospitals are cutting staff and services; many are being forced to close their doors.

Local hospitals are feeling the pinch. In March, the Maryland Hospital Association released a report that showed average revenue at 58 Maryland hospitals fell short of expenses by nearly 14 percent in the last quarter of 2008 - the worst profit margins reported by the state's hospitals to date.

While health care reform is a top priority for the Obama administration, hospitals need a remedy now. The federal government should step in to make sure that not one hospital fails in this country within the next two years. If some banks are too big to fail, then hospitals are far too critical to a community's health to fail.

But the government can and should only do so much. Hospitals themselves must change from the inside out to become well-run enterprises. By analyzing the millions of day-to-day processes and interactions - from patient admissions to Medicare billings - hospital staff can then implement the changes needed to make their facilities more efficient. Doing so will reduce costly medical errors, save time and, most important, save lives.

Improvements to the seemingly small stuff - the location of supplies, how patients are greeted, color-coding of lab sample containers - can make a huge difference. When everything and everyone are in the right places, then more time, the prized yet elusive asset at every hospital, becomes available for caregivers to really care for patients.