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ENLARGE
Jeff Ackerman
Some - especially those who want to stop growth (and we haven't been growing for almost two years now) - argue that there's nothing wrong with being a retirement community, something that Nevada County has probably been for several years. That explains the fact that we are one of the oldest (by median age) counties in the state and among the oldest in the nation.
That's why they really don't care much about the need for jobs, commerce, healthy schools, Little League parks or teen centers. They have theirs and they don't really see the need to share it.
A closer look, however, indicates that they may want to consider what their retirement community would be like without its own hospital.
When you get older, medical care is pretty darned important. And unless we start to get more employers who can provide health care insurance, Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital's long-term prospects don't appear too rosy.
As SNMH celebrates its 50th anniversary in October, we should consider how important its role has been on many levels. It is, for example, our largest private employer, with 820 employees and a payroll (I'll guess it's at least $40 million) that provides a substantial boost to our local economy.
It is our hospital, in every sense of the term. While it is affiliated with Catholic Heath-care West (there are lots of advantages to the affiliation), SNMH is a community hospital, which essentially means we own it.
In the last year it has cared for roughly 155,000 patients, with a patient satisfaction score above 90 percent, which is pretty remarkable considering how most folks hate hospitals. SNMH has made a concerted effort to improve customer service, even going so far as to provide patients with nurses' cell phone numbers. There are another 12,000 or so emergency room visits per month, with one of the fastest turn-around times in the state. It recently purchased another ambulance in an effort to improve response time, which is roughly nine minutes today.
The good folks at SNMH have been a bit too modest about the many services and quality care they provide, which is why I was invited to join a citizens advisory board last week.
I'm not shy about singing the hospital's praises, mostly because it saved my wife's life a couple of years ago. Our hospital has one of the best cancer centers around, which is still kind of a secret to some who believe they need to travel to the Bay Area and beyond for treatment. The hospital has been particularly proud of its breast cancer diagnostic and treatment programs.
But here's where the future looks kind of blurry, unless our community finds a way to get a little younger. More than half of SNMH's patients are served by Medicare, which only pays the hospital 30 cents on the dollar.
In the last year SNMH patient billings were roughly $320 million, but it received just a third of that, due to reimbursement formulas. A patient with insurance (and insured patients make up 30 percent of the total), by comparison, pays roughly 75 cents on the dollar, so it doesn't take a math genius to figure out what would happen to SNMH's financial picture if the percentage of Medicare patients continues to grow, while the number of insured declines.
That disparity is also one of the big reasons we are struggling to recruit doctors. It's tough for them to make a living - at least compared to other markets - when 55 percent of the patients only pay a quarter of the actual treatment costs.
And as this economy of ours worsens, the number of uninsured grows. SNMH has a legal obligation to treat all patients, no matter their financial status. In the past year, 5 percent of SNMH's patients were uninsured.
My hope, then, is that the hospital's board of directors will join the schools and many others in opposition to Grass Valley's Measure Z. (I refer to it as Measure Zzzzz, since the only thing it will manage to do is put Grass Valley to sleep.)
The measure is being proposed by elitists, who really have no stake in our future, which depends on the city's ability to react to current economic and social conditions
The question really isn't a matter of growth. We will grow, whether we want to or not. What it comes down to is planning for that inevitable growth. Measure Z would leave that to the whims of the ballot box and not in the hands of the people we elect to govern us and to the experts and professional planners we hire down at City Hall.
And unless we figure out how to keep our younger people employed and insured, our ability to care for the retirees through our very own hospital is at risk.
Jeff Ackerman is the publisher of The Union. His column appears on Tuesdays. Contact him at 477-4299, jeffa@theunion.com, or 464 Sutton Way, Grass Valley 95945.
That's why they really don't care much about the need for jobs, commerce, healthy schools, Little League parks or teen centers. They have theirs and they don't really see the need to share it.
A closer look, however, indicates that they may want to consider what their retirement community would be like without its own hospital.
When you get older, medical care is pretty darned important. And unless we start to get more employers who can provide health care insurance, Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital's long-term prospects don't appear too rosy.
As SNMH celebrates its 50th anniversary in October, we should consider how important its role has been on many levels. It is, for example, our largest private employer, with 820 employees and a payroll (I'll guess it's at least $40 million) that provides a substantial boost to our local economy.
It is our hospital, in every sense of the term. While it is affiliated with Catholic Heath-care West (there are lots of advantages to the affiliation), SNMH is a community hospital, which essentially means we own it.
In the last year it has cared for roughly 155,000 patients, with a patient satisfaction score above 90 percent, which is pretty remarkable considering how most folks hate hospitals. SNMH has made a concerted effort to improve customer service, even going so far as to provide patients with nurses' cell phone numbers. There are another 12,000 or so emergency room visits per month, with one of the fastest turn-around times in the state. It recently purchased another ambulance in an effort to improve response time, which is roughly nine minutes today.
The good folks at SNMH have been a bit too modest about the many services and quality care they provide, which is why I was invited to join a citizens advisory board last week.
I'm not shy about singing the hospital's praises, mostly because it saved my wife's life a couple of years ago. Our hospital has one of the best cancer centers around, which is still kind of a secret to some who believe they need to travel to the Bay Area and beyond for treatment. The hospital has been particularly proud of its breast cancer diagnostic and treatment programs.
But here's where the future looks kind of blurry, unless our community finds a way to get a little younger. More than half of SNMH's patients are served by Medicare, which only pays the hospital 30 cents on the dollar.
In the last year SNMH patient billings were roughly $320 million, but it received just a third of that, due to reimbursement formulas. A patient with insurance (and insured patients make up 30 percent of the total), by comparison, pays roughly 75 cents on the dollar, so it doesn't take a math genius to figure out what would happen to SNMH's financial picture if the percentage of Medicare patients continues to grow, while the number of insured declines.
That disparity is also one of the big reasons we are struggling to recruit doctors. It's tough for them to make a living - at least compared to other markets - when 55 percent of the patients only pay a quarter of the actual treatment costs.
And as this economy of ours worsens, the number of uninsured grows. SNMH has a legal obligation to treat all patients, no matter their financial status. In the past year, 5 percent of SNMH's patients were uninsured.
My hope, then, is that the hospital's board of directors will join the schools and many others in opposition to Grass Valley's Measure Z. (I refer to it as Measure Zzzzz, since the only thing it will manage to do is put Grass Valley to sleep.)
The measure is being proposed by elitists, who really have no stake in our future, which depends on the city's ability to react to current economic and social conditions
The question really isn't a matter of growth. We will grow, whether we want to or not. What it comes down to is planning for that inevitable growth. Measure Z would leave that to the whims of the ballot box and not in the hands of the people we elect to govern us and to the experts and professional planners we hire down at City Hall.
And unless we figure out how to keep our younger people employed and insured, our ability to care for the retirees through our very own hospital is at risk.
Jeff Ackerman is the publisher of The Union. His column appears on Tuesdays. Contact him at 477-4299, jeffa@theunion.com, or 464 Sutton Way, Grass Valley 95945.
