Sharon Hospital, 10 years later

Twelve years ago this past June the Board of Directors of Sharon Hospital with the concurrence of the hospital’s medical staff made the decision to sell the hospital to Essent Healthcare of Nashville, Tenn. When word of this decision became known in the community, it resulted in a two-year battle between those opposed to the decision and those who had faith in the board and medical staff’s decision.Both Richard Blumenthal, then Connecticut’s attorney general, and Ray Gorman, commissioner of the Connecticut Office of Healthcare Access, were involved in weighing the merits of the hospital’s planned sale to Essent. In April 2002, after obtaining the approval of both Blumenthal and Gorman, the final papers were signed, and Sharon Hospital became the first hospital in Connecticut to become a for-profit health-care facility.It seems to me that it is worthwhile to reflect back on that decision from the vantage point of a decade-plus. When the Sharon board made that decision, Sharon Hospital had been losing money for a number of years, and in order to continue operating, the hospital had been forced to invade its endowment. Over a period of several years, the erosion of this endowment became a significant factor as the board weighed a number of possible options in their efforts to keep a hospital in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut. There were approaches to New Milford Hospital and Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in an attempt to form a consortium that could reduce administrative overhead, but these proved unsuccessful. Other attempts included approaches to Hartford Hospital and St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, but these overtures also did not pan out. In New York state, Health Quest, the parent of Vassar Brothers Hospital in Poughkeepsie, was approached, but their unacceptable proposal meant that Sharon would become a band-aid station in referring all patients to the larger facility more than 45 minutes away. Several for-profit firms also were interested in buying Sharon Hospital, and the board and medical staff, after careful examination of the available options, settled on Essent Healthcare, which promised to keep Sharon Hospital as a full-service health-care facility. The importance of having this full-service facility available to people in Connecticut and New York was the determining factor for both the Board of Trustees and the hospital’s medical staff.In the past year we have witnessed the changing landscape of some of Connecticut’s hospitals. New Milford Hospital, similar in size and scope to Sharon, recently made the decision to become a diagnostic and emergency center and is referring most of its patients to Danbury Hospital under a recently concluded merger agreement. Waterbury’s two major health-care facilities, Waterbury Hospital and St. Mary’s, have been involved in a potential merger that now seems unlikely to be finalized due to the Catholic Church’s tenets and directives which St. Mary’s must follow. Both hospitals are now in the process of being acquired by two different for-profit hospital companies. It is interesting to note that these same Catholic tenets and directives would have applied to Sharon Hospital had the Board made the decision to partner with St. Francis Hospital in Hartford in 2000. This reality was not acceptable to the Sharon board and the hospital’s medical staff.So it does seem to make some sense in reflecting back on that decision which caused so much discord and upset with the perspective of 12 years. In the first place, the charitable assets of Sharon Hospital, valued at some $15 million in 2002, were turned over to the Foundation for Community Health, which in the past 10 years has provided over $5 million in grants that have helped improve the health and well-being of residents in both the Connecticut and nearby New York state communities in Sharon Hospital’s service area. The assets of that Foundation have increased to more than $24 million during that same 10-year period due to the wise stewardship of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, which was chosen by the Sharon Hospital board to be the recipient of the hospital’s endowment.The interior of Sharon Hospital has been transformed with a new and improved emergency room and a state-of-the-art birthing center. In fact, during the last 12 years, the for-profit owners of Sharon Hospital have spent over $36 million in upgrades and improvements to the facility. The recent merger of Sharon Hospital with Nashville-based RegionalCare Hospital Partners totally eliminated the hospital’s debt, so that Sharon Hospital is the only debt-free hospital in the state of Connecticut. The town of Sharon has also benefited from the taxes which the for-profit facility pays, which has meant $320,000 annually as a windfall to the town’s operating budget.Best of all, residents in the Northwest Corner of Connecticut and in eastern Dutchess and Columbia counties in New York continue to have access to quality medical care close to home. Rusty Chandler was a member of the Sharon Hospital board at the time the sale of the hospital was finalized with Essent. He first joined the hospital board in the early 1980s, became president of the board in 1997 and served until the sale to Essent in April 2002. He lives in Lakeville.