Hospital wars in Denver

[nurse2033, MSN, RN]

Three hospitals out of five in have moved out of downtown leaving Denver Health and St Joes the only ones. The article referenced here is in regard to Lutheran hospital. St Anthony Central just moved their hospital close by. Is is ethically responsible or a good use of health care dollars to move your hospital into another's area and poach their patients? http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/28684013/detail.html

[pishoncna]

I would say yes if they are going to a place that's in need of hospitals..

[nurse2033, MSN, RN]

I should add, it just seems that the response to declining collections is to move into a more lucrative area. I don't know this to be a fact, of course, but it seems like a pattern.

[MagsMom]

Healthcare is a business. It is obviously better to be in an area that will yield more profits.

[klone, MSN, RN]

I worked at SAC. It was kind of a dump. It was due for a complete overhaul.

[Flo., BSN, RN]

What about P/SL and Rose? I consider them downtown. I think it is fine to move hospitals. Compared to other major cities land is abundant around Denver. I think it makes sense for the hospitals to build the campus that they need, in the future the land may not be available.

As far as poaching pts, yup its a business. With this economy the hospitals want as many insured pts as possible.

[klone, MSN, RN]

Jewish is downtown as well.

[nola1202]

National Jewish is awesome wish I was qualified enough to work there, always wanted to. I do see the rush to the burb's as a way to ditch the indigent. Denver Health and what used to be Colorado General always were the mainstay of Denver's uninsured patients.

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

This is the same thing happening where I live. The city hospitals are closing and the hospital systems are building new hospitals in the suburbs to compete with each other for deeper pockets.

Aurora's been running around expanding throughout the state, even threatened a lawsuit with a city that didn't want them till they got their way. Now census is down at neighboring hospitals and they are laying off. Aurora also laid off this past year alone to save money, since they've spent so many millions on building new hospitals.

After they've laid people off, they turn around and hire new people for less. It is one way to get rid of older more expensive staff and there doesn't seem to be any way to fight it if you are not unionized. The supreme court made age discrimination very difficult to fight now and ruled for Walmart in the class action sex discrimination suit. Our govt is very anti-worker.

I also mentioned before the supreme court ruled against home care aids being paid overtime. Was it the supreme court or NLRB that ruled that nurses were supervisors in nursing homes and therefore couldn't be union members? It tells you where their interests lie and it's not with workers. It's all about the bottom line for govt and for business.

[brandy1017, ASN, RN]

I used to think their were too many managers and not enough floor staff. This is no longer the case. VP's, managers, supervisors and, of course, educators are being cut left and right to save the hospital money.

Healthcare administration is really downsizing these days and I think they are going way overboard now to save money at any cost.

[SummitRN, BSN, RN]

PSL, Rose, DH, and St Joes are all still downtown. VA, SAC, TCH, and University all needed more space and new buildings... badly. They had no choice but to move. Plus the city has expanded in the past decades and the hospitals are needed in the new ares. This lets the remaining downtown hospitals expand into the old spaces as St Joes already has and will do more.

[sir.shocksalot]

It seems like Denver Health is starting to get strained from the decrease in nearby hospitals. The west side of Denver, near where the old SAC used to be is quite ghetto and sees a decent amount of trauma that would usually go to SAC, now most of it has to go to DH. SAC moved way out of the way to the point where they are now kind of a pain in the butt to get to, as a result DH is getting ridiculously busy.

Lutheran is another hospital that is pretty much situated in the ghetto, so it makes sense to me that they are having budget problems, it doesn't help that SAC moved further away leaving Lutheran the only hospital on the west side of Denver.

The only way this problem will start improving is when the economy picks up, people start getting jobs, and people start getting some semblance of insurance that pays more than medicare/medicaid.