Hospital and local officials say they’re still trying to digest a 138-page study of the operations and finances of The Regional Medical Center of Orangeburg & Calhoun Counties, but they expect to be talking about the report soon.

“We really haven’t had time to study the report,” but at first glance, it appears that the report’s authors made “a lot of assumptions not based on statistical data,” said TRMC trustee board Chairman Willie B. Owens,

The report said the hospital — which is jointly owned by Orangeburg and Calhoun counties — is “financially under-performing” and has lost $4.6 million over the past three years.

A work session is in store for the TRMC board of trustees to discuss the study prepared by Ponder & Company and Grobmyer Associates, Owens said.

Members of Orangeburg County Council, Calhoun County Council and the hospital board got their first look at the report Thursday night during a 2.5-hour closed-door session of Orangeburg County Council.

Owens said the hospital strives to provide “quality care for everybody,” including those who cannot afford to pay for it, so therefore “you’re not going to make a whole lot of money.”

“We want to take our time and study this report,” Owens said. “Any time you do a study, you get some good stuff out of it and some bad.”

“We’re going to sit down with the board and the CEO and see what we need to do,” he said. “I’m going to ask each member to read it before we sit down.”

Owens said his initial impression of the report was that “a lot of it wasn’t surprising.” He said Ponder & Company “specializes in acquisitions. They do what they call surveys and acquisitions. It’s difficult for a company like that to be too objective.”

n Wimberly: Report

is worth its cost

Orangeburg County Councilman Harry Wimberly said Friday he read the report, “but not in depth. I just hit some highlights.”

His initial conclusion is that “we’re back to basically the same issues that we talked about earlier. There really weren’t any big surprises to me. But at the same time, there were some things they talked about that I didn’t realize needed attention as badly as they do.”

“We’ve definitely got a problem, I kind of suspected that. It may be some things we can work through. I personally think we need to look at some alternatives. I’m not going to elaborate on that right now. There must be some changes made. What magnitude, I don’t know yet,” he said.

Wimberly said the $75,000 cost of the study “was money well-spent in that we have professional opinions from people that do this for a living.”

Furthermore, those opinions are based on data collected directly from TRMC, he continued.

“Every bit of the information they received came from the hospital — from hospital board members, employees, administrators,” he said.

David L. Atchison, president and CEO of Ponder & Company, said more than 50 people were interviewed for the report.

“I specifically asked (Thursday night), ’Was anybody interviewed as far as elected officials or the general public?’ and they said no,” Wimberly said.

So, in effect, “TRMC made the report. These people just collected the material and put it together. Whatever is in there came straight from hospital administrators, employees and hospital board members,” Wimberly said.

Given all that, the report “should carry a little more weight as far as (making) the board realize they need to adjust, more so than a council person like myself making comments,” he said.

Wimberly said he is willing “to give the hospital board time to sink into (the report) and see what their reaction is.” He said he expects the board to act quickly and not let the matter “linger on and on.”

If the board does not readily respond to the report, “that would give me even more reason to believe we need to look at some other alternatives,” Wimberly said.

Two months ago, Wimberly said the hospital has lost $6 million a year for the past three years.

“I will stand by my numbers,” he said Friday.

“I went by what the hospital actually made out of operations, and not (income from) investments,” he said. “When you look at raw numbers and don’t add back return on investments, you’ve got a different story” than the picture painted in the report.

He said it would have been even worse except that “one year they had a double apportionment share,” which was a one-time, $7 million windfall.

Wimberly pointed out the report’s finding that “they’re short $15 million of cash” over a five-year period and total assets have declined by $9 million since 2001.

n Hospital president

has to be ’nimble’

In Thursday night’s presentation, “I didn’t hear anything that was a bombshell,” said Thomas C. Dandridge, TRMC president and chief executive officer.

“These are things we talk about, and deal with, all the time,” he said. “The factors they lined out are (affecting) not only this hospital, but are factors every hospital has to pay attention to.”

An example is the report’s observation that hospitals have to deal with “complex and changing reimbursement rules.”

“We’re working in an increasingly difficult payment environment,” he said. Medicare recipients are “50 percent of our business,” and “here’s the biggest buyer of health care in the country saying it’s going belly-up in 12 years,” Dandridge said.

That’s enough to give long-term lenders and borrowers alike a case of the jitters, he said.

In Orangeburg, “we’ve got a few more challenges: high unemployment and a lot of uninsured people,” Dandridge said.

“We provide high-end services” and downturns in the local economy affect the hospital more than, say, a hamburger restaurant, he said.

“I think we’re being very proactive” in pursuing a number of initiatives to improve the facility’s bottom line, Dandridge said.

“Like most businesses, our plan is across a number of fronts,” from establishing satellite facilities to improving productivity and “investing our portfolio in a much more aggressive fashion,” he said.

“It’s a hundred little things you need to do,” he said. “This industry changes fast and you have to watch it constantly, but I think I’m nimble enough” to keep abreast of the trends.

Dandridge said Friday he has read “about 12 pages” of the report. He is reading it closely to “check for factual accuracy” and to make sure figures are presented in context.

Thursday’s meeting “was a fairly long meeting. People were ready to book it out of there,” Dandridge said.

“I got home (Thursday) night and asked myself, ’What is the next step?’” Dandridge said. “We never came to any final conclusion on what to do with (the report).”

“We’ll probably take a few weeks to digest it and then I’m sure somebody will call somebody and say, ’What now with this thing? Let’s get back together,’” Dandridge said.

The report said the hospital and some of its physicians suffer from an “unfavorable image.”

“That is something we’re concerned about,” the hospital president said, declaring that he is proud of his medical staff.

They have had the same training, participate in the same clinical trials and use “the same technology and the same drugs” as their counterparts in big-city and teaching hospitals, Dandridge said.

“Some people think a city has better restaurants, better schools, better hospitals, better everything. That’s not always the case. Sometimes that’s a hard concept for people to grasp,” he said.

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