As Healthcare Paradigm Shifts, NJ Hospitals Face Uncertain Future
New Jersey hospitals are in a bind. Some of them may close in the next few years, experts say, unless they find a way to transform themselves into healthcare systems that focus on keeping patients healthy in an outpatient setting, while dealing with the reality that most revenue is still based on in-hospital services they provide.
Hospitals must have cash reserves and an operating margin of at least 3 percent or they may face a financial crisis, according to current and recent hospital executives.
“If you’re not in a system that has that financial foundation, I don’t know how you manage the next three to five years,” said Judith Persichilli, recently retired president of Catholic Health East-Trinity Health, a national hospital system.
The hospitals that survive this transition period will look very different from the hospitals of the recent past. They will have fewer beds, more links with primary-care and medical specialty providers, and more partnerships with other hospitals in which each hospital only provides specific services.
That was the verdict of a panel assembled yesterday by the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute in Ewing. (Kitchenman/NJSpotlight)
Suppose Valley doubled in size and STILL didn’t make it? That possibility hasn’t even been mentioned. The presumption is that if they expand as proposed, all will be well. But how a hospital is managed and countless other factors would apply. Planning Board, what if after suffering through up to 20 years of disruption we were stuck with a gigantic empty monolith?
I think that is a distinct possibility, expansion or no expansion…
As bad as it would look it wouldn’t effect the tax levy because Valley pays no property tax on the main hospital, only on the residential, and commercial properties it has purchased. There would be less need for municipal services, sewage, water use, and decreased traffic. Hummmm makes one think doesn’t it.?
Yes, #3. So let’s drive them out of town on a rail and make a really nice park WITH NO SPORTS FIELDS. We’d get the same amount of taxes and it would be wonderful.
They can be merged with another hospital system. We could have a large for-profit institution in our midst with an H Zone to play in.
No matter how you try to figure this expansion, it does not compute for the people who live here.