Our county hospital administrator has told us that he believes our children’s hospital should be placed under the county hospital, in other words under his control.
This is the same hospital administrator that has been under fire lately.
No one has yet explained how the citizens of El Paso could approve bonds to pay for the construction of the children’s hospital and the county hospital would have the right to charge the children’s hospital rent. We paid for the facility and gave it to the children’s hospital. Why does the county hospital deserve rent income for it?
If the children’s group could actually afford to make the rent payments the county hospital would be the beneficiary of an additional $10 million a year of income, just as if we had voted for a tax increase for the hospital.
Our county hospital administrator was at the head of the parade supporting the building of the children’s hospital. Studies showed that the children’s hospital would be financially viable. What he failed to tell us was that the study was based on a considerably smaller facility. What we got was never predicted to be viable by any published study.
Last year our county hospital administrator was given $150 million of bond money to build three new out-patient clinics and to refurbish part of the hospital. If the hospital was truly running profitably it would have been able to do the refurbishing with operating revenues. Shortly after getting the money our administrator declared that the money needed to be “repurposed”.
The future
People from the children’s hospital and from the county hospital have been working to try to find a way to solve the financial problems.
Now we are told that the way to do this is to bring the children’s hospital under the county umbrella.
This doesn’t make sense to me. I would think that a private or not-for-profit group would have high interest in being able to operate a hospital where they have no rent to pay. Yet it looks like no one wants to do it.
Could it be that our hospital administrator has deliberately been unreasonable in whatever negotiations that have been held? Could it be that no one wants the children’s hospital because he ran the interested parties off? Could he have contributed to the failure of the children’s hospital so that he could gain control of it?
Whether you trust him or not, the hospital administrator should not be the one handling these negotiations. He has a conflict of interest.
One technique that might work here is to issue a request for proposals (RFP). The RFP would ask interested parties to tell us under what conditions they would operate a children’s hospital in the facility and what level of services they would provide.
We have the wrong people handling this situation.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
“…just as if we had voted for a tax increase for the hospital…”
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You don’t suppose that was the reason all along? That they thought CH would be a cash cow UMC could milk, except it backfired on Valenti.
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I have asked that very question at CC and the Judge and the other 4 remained silent. NO one wants to explain it which means either they have no idea or they are involved in a coverup.
This failure to answer has caused me to request the ballot and bond language on the CH and the Clinics. I’m wondering if the language has been violated or if an SEC violation has occurred. Also the failure to release information to the public as has been reported causes one to thing the UMC and CH relationship my be illegal..
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I have commented on more than one occasion that I believe UMC charged Children’s Hospital rent to create a new revenue stream which would help cover up its own financial problems, a move which bit them in the a__. UMC needed the revenue. Brutus as my witness, I also predicted months ago that Valenti & Company were trashing Children’s Hospital publicly as part of a planned hostile takeover.
The media has totally ignored a very interesting fact: Bill Hanson, chairman of the UMC board, was also a member of the CH board up until just shortly before UMC started its campaign to discredit CH. Aside from that being a possible conflict of interest, as a member of both boards, he had access to the financials of both entities. It’s not as though CH ran up a $70 million tab overnight. Stop and think about that.
If we can’t trust these people with our money, how can we trust them with our lives and the lives of our children?
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I always said UMC would take it over
Sent from my iPhone
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