Arkansas Blog

The first dupe post I can recall on the Arkansas Blog..a momentus moment for the blog :-)

This is an example of how competition in the marketplace results in infrastructure improvements by incumbant hospitals.

You can thank the Arkansas Heart Hospital and Arkansas Surgical Hospital for driving competition in medical care in Arkansas.

This is good for the state.

Thank the Heart Hospital? Thank the Surgical Hospital? That is outrageous! Both of these hospitals are driven by profit and not patient care.
The Heart Hospital should have a slogan that says, Come here for your heart, as long as nothing else is wrong we can handle it. However, if you have a stroke or a problem with your diabetes, we will have to send you to Baptist or St. Vincent.

ASH is even worse. Have you seen their ER? That's right. THEY DON'T HAVE ONE! How in the hell can you call yourself a hospital and not have an emergency room?

AHH and ASH? No thanks! I will go to a hospital where they can take care of me without me having to worry of the doctor is taking care of himself first. Bus Driver you are wrong.

If capacity is being added without a cooresponding increase in the patient base, this is adding costs that will be reflected in their overhead rates which means it will affect the insurance costs. This is one cause of the double digit increases in medical costs.

If you build another department store in a town and the nimber of customers doesn't increase (think the TIF paying for new construction), then every store"s average sales drop. If the market is going to absorb new capacity, you have to bring in additional customers equivalent to the newly added capacity.

Room imporovement is laudaable but will that mean that the average daily cost of the room will go up in response. Added emergency room capacity might be laudable based on problems but are they pulling customers with insurance away from other hospitals, then someone will be losing. Overall, the consumer will be paying off this $40 million plus interest. Where are the cardiovascular customers going to be stolen from. They already have the Stephen's Heart Center.

In some states, there is an overarching state agency that has to approve changes in capacity orcapability. Does Arkansas have anyone watching as the state will be picking up a chunk of these costs with Medicaid.

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There is considerable crowing at UAMS and St Vincent's ERs and this being done to bring it up to reasonable capacity. Patients are lined up in the hallways both of these places due to lack of beds. The same thing is being done in similar hospitals nearly everywhere.
The problem with your conclusions is that the numbers have increased 3 or 4-fold in terms of patients seen without an increase in ER space.

Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance don't pick up the costs. The costs are set in stone by rigid guidelines. Do you really think SVI can charge an extra $100 for an ER visit to create revenue to build it? That's not the way the current medical system works.

I agree with RT's assessment of the surgical hospital. However, the heart hospital does a good job of taking care of patients. Not better than Baptist, but better than SVI and especially UAMS.

There is considerable crowing at UAMS and St Vincent's ERs and this being done to bring it up to reasonable capacity. Patients are lined up in the hallways both of these places due to lack of beds. The same thing is being done in similar hospitals nearly everywhere.
The problem with your conclusions is that the numbers have increased 3 or 4-fold in terms of patients seen without an increase in ER space.

Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance don't pick up the costs. The costs are set in stone by rigid guidelines. Do you really think SVI can charge an extra $100 for an ER visit to create revenue to build it? That's not the way the current medical system works.

I agree with RT's assessment of the surgical hospital. However, the heart hospital does a good job of taking care of patients. Not better than Baptist, but better than SVI and especially UAMS.

ST Vincent's expanding space? Last I heard there were several floors in the main hospital that were closed down. There was one floor closed at the Sherwood facility also. So now they are spending money on capital improvements instead of paying nurses and other staff a decent wage.

RT - you sound like you work for the Hospital Association - trying to bad mouth some of the best facilities we have in Arkansas.

If you have heart problems, I encourage you to take yourself to one of the general hospitals - have fun waiting on a doctor and having procedures done with last year's technology. Those of us who value our health will go to specialists.

Cheers!

One of my main concerns is that there are already staffing shortages at St Vincents and to add facilities and more patients without providing the corps of workers needed to take care of them is not going to improve health care in Little Rock.
The bottom line used to be patient care but now it's having the latest technology, the most modern building, and upgraded rooms (what does that really mean....more channels on the TV set??!!).
Hopefully, some of that $40 million dollars will be spent on recruiting and retaining qualified staff otherwise it's just a case of style over substance.
Will you get better health care or a Potemkin-like facade?

Bus Driver, you've missed a key point. Unless you're the perfect heart patient with no side symptoms, AHH & ASH aren't going to give you the time of the day.
Get your facts straight. They're more specialized than you think. They're not equipped to deal with any surprise problems occurring during surgery and don't want to have any.
Now, who do you want treating you if it's an emergency?
Hopefully you won't face that problem but until then I'd recommend a trip to a good brain surgeon. You seem to need it.

"They're not equipped to deal with any surprise problems occurring during surgery and don't want to have any.
"

So Col are you speaking from experience on this and you know this to be true or is this just something that you've "heard"?

Heard it from staff members at St Vincents when I queried them about the issue. The phrase they used describing the typical patient at ASH & AHH was "lucrative heart patients."

"Heard it from staff members at St Vincents"

Well that says enough right there. Did they also tell you that some of the same doctors that practice at AHH also practice at St. Vincents? and Baptist? So if they are evil doctors, why do there have priviledges there?

Did you know that AHH also has physicians on staff that can treat non-heart related conditions, such as kidney's and livers, in case a heart patient comes in and has complications? I bet you didn't, because the "staff at St. Vincent's" won't tell you that. They probably don't even know.

They are just repeating ridiculous accusations that are thrown at specialty facilities because they don't like the competition.

Tsk tsk. How you rant, Busdriver. How can there be any competition when ASH & AHH send the ones they won't treat to St Vincents, etc?
Hey, you're right they are good docs at ASH & AHH. It just also so happens they are highly selective. It's not that we're bad-mouthing those two hospitals but don't make them out to be more than they really are.
This flak about competition worrying other hospitals when it comes to heart patients is not true.
You just call 'em up and ask 'em if they'll treat anyone, no matter what. Ask 'em if they'll be the only ones who'll treat you no matter what or whether they'll farm you out to other systems because you don't quite fit their profile as they call it.
It's not fear of competition that's upset my friends but the hypocrisy and false impressions put out by ASH & AHH.
Go ahead. Check it out. Do some honest-to-goodness research from all sides of the question. Ask them what the exceptions are and their comments to these accusations.
It'll resolve the issue better than you or I can on this blog.

Its just one more racket. The emergency room in the new family medical clinic for the uninsured in our current health care system and, they can pass the cost on to the paying customers by way of higher insurance rates.

The tech bubble burst, the housing bubble burst, wait until the health care bubble bursts.

We can't keep going this way folks, it won't work.

I challenge YOU to call AHH and ask if they take all patients or only those with certain criteria. You obviously haven't done YOUR homework.

Mea culpa. I owe you a big apology BusDriver. I placed the call as you suggested. I guess if you're going to hop on a horse and ride it, you'd better see first if it has legs!!

Didn't have time to check out ASH, Did you call them?