On Friday, Governor Malloy's budget office announced that it would distribute $14.1 million to six small hospitals, stating there are “massive differences between large hospitals and small ones in profit margins.”
"We know that hospitals are not one-size-fits all, and that’s why we’re proactively reprioritizing and reallocating dollars to support small hospitals that need support most,” Office of Policy and Management Secretary Ben Barnes said in a statement. “To be clear, hospital systems are seeing extraordinary revenues, but today we’re working to reprioritize and reallocate payments so we can assist the small hospitals and support patient care.” New Haven Register.
This is certainly a step in the right direction.
Some hospitals and some hospital CEOs are making incredible profits and salaries.
This is not only wrong, it is not sustainable.
It is time we started to view healthcare as a system, in which some hospitals will make money and some will not, and sometimes it is not due to better management at one than the other, it is sometimes due to things like where the hospital is located and the poverty of that region.
We need to remember that hospitals are in the business of providing for the health of their patients and the community, not in filling someone's bank account, and that hospitals who need more help from the state should get it, not the hospitals who do not need that help.
St Luke said, "Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same."
This should be the guiding principle for hospitals because healthcare is not a business, it is a calling.
We, the public, need to hold healthcare management to this principle
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