Hospital Authority Votes to Consider Partnership, Sale of Stephens County Hospital

The Stephens County Hospital Authority Board approves consideration of a partnership or a possible sale of Stephens County Hospital.

Those are just two of the possibilities being considered by the Board, which has been meeting for weeks in executive sessions to come up with a plan to keep the doors open.

Monday evening, the Hospital Authority board met in yet another executive session to consider those and other options, according to Hospital Administrator Lynne Anderson.

Now that the hospital is considering the possibility of a partnership with another healthcare system, Anderson said they’ll be looking for anyone interested.

“They will be looking out for anybody that might be interested in partnering with us,” Anderson said Wednesday. “Then, once they’ve put that word out there, we will see who is interested and give consideration to it and see where we are with our turnaround and then make a decision to see if that’s the route we want to take.”

Anderson said what that partnership would look like is still unclear.

She said a partnership could mean selling Stephens County Hospital outright, but she says there are also many different options for affiliations.

“It could be seeing who might be interested in acquiring us. There are lots of different kinds of affiliations that health systems and hospitals enter into. So we would just look at who is interested and what kind of relationship they might be interested in,” Anderson explained.

If Stephens County Hospital is sold outright, it could affect the bond monies they recently received from the County.

The concern is if the hospital is sold for less than the bond, Stephens County taxpayers would find themselves in a similar situation as Franklin County citizens.

Franklin County found themselves on the hook to repay some $30-million dollars in bond monies when Ty Cobb Healthcare defaulted on the repayments and then sold the hospital to St. Mary’s Healthcare for $12-million.

Anderson said that issue would need to be addressed if and when the hospital is sold.

In other business Monday, Board members also formally signed an engagement letter to keep using outside consultants Stroudwater Associates, including hiring Stroudwater employee Roger Forgey.

Anderson said Forgey began work last week and is tasked with developing initiatives to turn the hospital’s finances around.

“We will be working on things like reducing length of stay, improving our billing and cash flow cycle; working on different things for efficency and staff productivity,” she said.

The hospital first hired Stroudwater Associates in May to help them put into place a strategic plan that would improve their finances.

The hospital’s financial troubles began after they lost more than $4 million dollars last fiscal year.

Since then the Hospital has reported a negative bottom line each month.