elpasospeak

Let’s say that you went to your employer and asked to borrow 3 1/2 months salary as an advance.

What would he/she say?

If you are working for a government agency the answer would have to be no.  In Texas governments cannot pay for work in advance.

If you are working for a private employer they would probably ask you some questions before they said no.  Those questions might include:

How are you going to pay us back?

Are you going to somehow increase your income?

Are you going to get a second job?

Are you expecting a pay raise?

Are you expecting to inherit money?

Have you been playing the lottery?

Does someone owe you that can actually pay you back?

Will this money fix the problem or will you continue to go deeper in debt?

Are you going to cut expenses?

How long will it take you to pay us back?

What interest rate are you expecting to pay?

Hospitals are no different

Our county hospital wants to borrow $20 million from next year’s tax receipts.  How are they going to pay us back?

They can’t get another job.  They should not be playing the lottery.  The children’s hospital owes them some money but cannot pay it back.  They might be able to increase taxes but that won’t fix their ongoing deficit.

Cutting expenses is an option.  Can they?  Will it mean denying care to needy patients?  Will it mean cutting corners and giving medical care of a lower quality?

Could they hire someone that knows how to run a hospital on a financially sound basis?

We deserve better

Brutus

Our El Paso county hospital wants to be known as University Medical Center of El Paso.  They seem to have forgotten that their purpose is to provide medical care at taxpayer expense to citizens in the county that cannot afford medical care elsewhere.

A few years ago the county hospital chief executive officer was among the leaders of a movement to get the voters to go into debt to build a children’s hospital.  They convinced the voters that this was a good plan.  Instead of starting with a modest facility and then growing it in size and scope if they could make the project financially viable, they built a wonderful multi-story facility that cannot pay it’s bills.

There is a great deal of confusion among the voters about who should pay for what.  The county hospital financial statements claim that the county hospital makes over $9 million dollars profit each year at the expense of the children’s hospital.  That might be true if the children’s hospital could pay it’s bills.  The county hospital charges the children’s hospital for rent even when the voters paid for the new hospital through bonds.

My understanding is that while the children’s hospital has a separate hospital license it is owned by the county hospital.  Some people think that the current political situation is part of a plan for the county hospital chief executive to take control of the children’s hospital.  Together or separate it appears that neither one makes a profit and the taxpayers have to foot the bill.

Getting worse

The situation is going to get worse.  Recently Texas Tech University announced plans to build a new teaching hospital on the west side of El Paso.  They did not ask the county hospital people to run the new hospital for them.  In fact they asked a publically owned hospital company to operate the hospital for them.  This is the same group that openly opposed the creation of the new taxpayer funded children’s hospital saying that they already had such a facility in El Paso and that there was not sufficient demand for another, especially a big one.

We now have an open split between Texas Tech which has been operating out of the county hospital and our county hospital district.  Look for more activity to move to the teaching hospital and away from the county hospital.

It seems that our county hospital chief executive is not getting along well with others.  This is costing us money.

Now the situation has reached the point where the county hospital district wants permission to borrow $60 million through tax anticipation notes.  In other words they want to borrow money on future tax revenue.  In the private sector they call this a “payday loan”.

Payday loans are expensive.  We should stay away from them.

We need management at the hospital district that does not drive us further to the poor house.

What should we do?

We deserve better

Brutus

I don’t know of a single children’s hospital in the United States that operates at a profit.

From what I can see they depend upon private donations to keep operating.

Our situation

Looking at our children’s hospital audit for 2013, it looks like they reported a loss of $13 million dollars.

According to the report, revenues were about $86 million and expenses were about $99 million.  Maybe those numbers do not include the money that they are supposed to pay the county hospital.

Can it can be salvaged?

I guess we will know eventually.  Unfortunately the voters won’t be able to hear about the real numbers for 60 days since both sides have agreed to that period of secrecy.

How two government organizations can agree to keep things secret while they work out their differences is beyond me.

We deserve better

Brutus