Hospital making improvements but patient bills still an issue

Hospital making improvements but patient bills still an issue

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

Relations between Key West City officials and the Lower Keys Medical Center have improved since the contentious meeting last August when city commissioners voted to explore taking over hospital operations because of hundreds of complaints from hospital patients about their care.

But there is still concern over the high costs that patients face, as evident in a March 21 commission meeting where executives of the Stock Island hospital gave an update on the improvements they have made in the past several months. Former CEO Steve Pennington said the hospital hired an outside consultant to study its costs and compare them to hospitals in the South Florida region.

“We found that for in-patient charges, we were roughly in the middle of the pack compared with South Florida hospitals,” he said. “Our emergency department charges were actually quite lower than our peers. But our imaging charges were higher. They were about 13 percent higher.”

Pennington said the hospital was working to lower the x-ray, MRI and other imaging costs and patients would begin to see results in the next two months. But Commissioner Richard Payne made an angry statement to Pennington and current CEO David Clay, who also attended the meeting, pointing out that the hospital’s parent company, Community Health Systems (CHS), reported a 32 percent profit margin for the Lower Keys Medical Center in 2015 while paying its CEO a $26.4 million salary.

“Your hospital has a monopoly. You’re 50 miles away from your nearest competitor,” Payne said. “A 32 percent profit when the national average is seven percent is obscene and unconscionable.”

Commissioner Sam Kaufman, while applauding the improvements in patient care that Pennington and Clay reported, agreed that lowering medical charges was a critical issue.

“We really want a community hospital. A hospital that serves the residents here in Key West as the primary folks to be served, as opposed to the shareholders or the CEO of CHS. And that’s the main problem that we have,” he said. “When a CEO is earning $26 million a year and a hospital is earning 32 percent profit and our folks can’t afford the services, I don’t think I’m going to be happy.”

Pennington said that hospital officials are concentrating more on improving patient care than lowering charges for that care. He pointed out that over 90 new staff – including 29 new nurses – have been hired since July 1. And there have been improvements in several metrics that make up the star ratings given to hospitals by Medicaid and Medicare, he said. LKMC currently has a one star rating out of a possible five stars.

“Readmissions are going down. Patient satisfaction is going up. And our overall ratings from outside will start coming up as well,” Pennington said.

CEO Clay reported that the hospital has just signed an agreement with Mt. Sinai Medical Center for a cardiac program at LKMC, helping heart patients get treatment locally instead of traveling up to the mainland. New medical equipment, new patient mattresses and a reconfigured admitting process have all helped boost patient satisfaction, he said, as has better communication with hospital staff.

“If they’re not happy, our patients aren’t happy,” Clay said about hospital doctors and nurses. “That’s more of a long-term goal to really get where we want to go. But we’re well on our way.”

While praising Clay and Pennington for their efforts over the past several months, commissioners kept coming back to the high costs of patient care. But Pennington said profit margins were not the primary issue for hospital administrators, patient care was.

“That’s not something we really focus on. We think if we provide high patient satisfaction and invest in the hospital properly, then the profit margins will be where they will. That’s not something we should be penalized for or accolated for either way,” he said.

But Payne again took issue with Pennington’s reasoning.

“We have people in this city that are going elsewhere for care, up the Keys or up to Miami. Some people have actually even moved away from Key West because they knew they would not be able to afford care that they would get here,” he said, adding, “I want to see some prices start dropping down. And I don’t want to wait 13 years until your lease runs out before I see prices getting down more in line [with] South Florida.”

Commissioner Margaret Romero said that she is impressed by the changes hospital administrators have made since the patient outcry against LKMC last year. Focusing on profit margins isn’t the answer to providing better care in Key West, she said.

“Nobody goes to a local appliance store and fusses because that person is making a profit on the business. The rents are more expensive here, the taxes are more expensive here… There are a lot of things here that are more expensive,” she said, congratulating Pennington and Clay on their efforts.

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