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It includes leasing some beds to another hospital, cutting the number of employees and working to get doctors to invest in the company.
“What we are doing is incredibly complicated. The company is quite distressed,” said Jerome Mee, chief executive officer of Atlantic Health Group. Atlantic now has controlling interest of Renaissance Healthcare, the company leasing the Terrell facility on Highway 34. Renaissance also owns hospitals in Dallas, Groves and a facility under renovation in Grand Prairie.
The city owns the hospital and leases it to a management company.
Mr. Gee said the keys to making the hospital profitable are:
Reducing staff and other expenses
Working out deals with critical suppliers such as pharmacies.
Bringing in physicians as investors.
Improving the hospital’s reputation in the community, especially with community involvement.
Mr. Mee said some employees already have been laid off to reduce expenses, but said none of the deleted positions would affect health care.
The hospital’s clinics in Wills Point and Forney also have been closed.
Atlantic also is negotiating with a separate hospital firm that wants to lease 40 beds while it builds a new facility in Dallas. Mr. Mee said the sublease, which would have to be approved by the city according to the current lease, would bring in needed revenue and would not interfere with serving the community.
Atlantic already has put money into the hospitals, Mr. Mee said. In less than a week after purchasing company stock, Atlantic invested $2.6 million in the company and plans to raise that to as much as $4 million. Mr. Mee said the company has a $22 million line of credit.
Mr. Mee showed a graph which showed falling revenue from all the Renaissance hospitals. The graph showed revenue reaching its low point below $40 million in April then beginning to climb as the year progresses.
Previous owners
Atlantic is the last in a long list of companies that has taken over the hospital promising to turn it around.
In January 2007, Resurgence Health Group, then the hospital’s management company, announced that it intended to close the hospital by March 9, 2007. The city scrambled to find a new operator and closed the deal with Renaissance in February 2007.
Renaissance rapidly renovated the facility, painting the outside, trimming trees and pulling down tattered awnings. Inside, the company improved electrical systems, painted, put in new flooring and added leather sofas and big flat-screen TVs in waiting rooms.
But rumors of a possible Renaissance bankruptcy began circulating by December 2007 and Atlantic Healthcare began negotiations to purchase stock. That wasn’t completed until earlier this month.
It was widely believed locally that the Terrell hospital had been making money but that those funds had been going to help get the Grand Prairie hospital under renovation up and running.
“The Terrell hospital didn’t make a dime in 2007,” Mr. Mee said following the meeting Tuesday, and no money from the Terrell hospital went to Grand Prairie.
He said Atlantic has new capital for the Grand Prairie facility and plans to open it in the first quarter of 2009.
In Terrell, another name change also is in the works. Mr. Mee said a marketing firm has been hired to suggest a list of names but added “I have no issue with calling it Terrell Community Hospital.”
He said a key to turning the hospital around will be attracting doctors to invest. The doctors would be active participants in running the facility with seats and votes on the board of directors.
“It incentivises them. It gives them ownership,” he said.
He said he is aware that Baylor hospital has purchased land in Terrell, but pointed out that hospital companies often hold onto land for years without building. And he said he is not concerned about a hospital under construction in Forney. “We have the advantage of being up and running.”
And, he told the council, Atlantic is interested in possibly buying the hospital building.
Despite the problems, Mr. Mee was confident the hospital could be saved.
“This is the system we’ve used before and it’s never failed.”
© Copyright 2005-2007 by Kaufman County Online
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| Last Updated: Jan 4th, 2009 - 18:57:55 |
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