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
Posted by Brutus 
elpasospeak 
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