Sharon Hospital not immune to the nation's financial woes

SHARON — Sharon Hospital President and CEO Charles Therrien said in an interview with The Journal this week that the hospital is moving to streamline operations in the face of the recession, but added that the overall financial health of the hospital is good.

Some streamlining and cost cutting are likely, said Therrien. But no clinical staff reductions are anticipated. In fact, Sharon Hospital is hiring in some areas, including the nursing and pharmacy departments.

“We’re trying to become more efficient,� said Therrien. Combining duties for management personnel, and cross training of nurses, so they can work in more than one department, are part of that trend —although, he noted, some tasks are too specialized to allow for nurses to move from department to department.

“You can’t send someone on a two-week refresher course and then expect them to deliver a baby,� for example.

The hospital is now looking for labor and delivery nurses and is recruiting doctors, notably for cardiac care and orthopedic surgery.

“There is a shortage of physicians, for primary care especially,� said Therrien, adding that the recruitment process can take up to 18 months “from the time we say ‘let’s do this’ to getting the doctor in place.�

He offered a glimpse into the finances of health care. When the economy began to falter, “people said that health care would be immune to it. That’s just not the case.

“We’re anticipating that with this economy, people are going to be deferring services. We’ve heard anecdotally,from doctors’ offices, that people are putting things off.�

The recent report from the state Office of Health Care Access showed that, although hospital finances were sound, there was a rise in uncompensated care costs in fiscal year 2007 — a trend Therrien expects will continue.

“It’s not a gloom-and-doom scenario as far as uncompensated care costs go,� he said. But as the ability of individuals to pay is affected, so is the hospital’s bottom line.

Asked which departments are most profitable, Therrien demurred, saying, “It’s hard to say because one department leads to another.

“Seventy percent of our admissions come through the emergency room, for example. The ER loses money but the patients move on to other services.�

Surgery is the most profitable activity, he added.

Therrien said the hospital has had preliminary talks with Mountainside, a non-medical substance abuse facility in North Canaan, about including a stop at Sharon Hospital as part of the admission process.

Clients bound for Mountainside are required to be detoxed before admission, but often arrive still in need of medical supervision. Therrien said a tentative plan is to have the incoming client go from the airport to the hospital for assessment, and then on to the rehab.

But any move toward more detoxification services will require more specialized training for staff.

The bottom line is that Sharon Hospital is in pretty good shape as the recession develops, Therrien said.

“But I certainly expect 2009 to be a very challenging year.�