Adapting to the Changes in Health Care

Thank you all for your very helpful thoughts and suggestions. It was hard for me not to jump in and respond but I really believed it was important for you all to debate the relative merits of the suggestions that were put forward. As I explained previously, this is not an issue of not having a plan or even having the wrong plan, there are things that happen that are completely out of our control. Much like life, it is how you adjust to those changes that are unexpected that often define both our personal and professional success.

We will be making changes immediately to address the things we can address, contractual changes, keeping our appointments filled, redoubling our efforts on cancellations, aggressively hiring additional therapist, seeking additional long term care beds to address the kids who end up "stuck" in inpatient awaiting a bed - a whole host of things. We have all been giving our best and we need to continue that over the last five months of the year to close the $700K budget gap we find ourselves in. Senior Leadership is committed to continuing to look at every possibility to create savings, while still maintaining the quality of care and work environment that is so important to all of us.

You can see the passion in the many responses to the blog - people protecting their areas while offering up others. Many of you have written to me off line and made other suggestions. I am not going to respond individually to each of the suggestions that were made but know each suggestion was fully examined and considered. Some things we couldn’t change for safety reasons, others for equity, and others because we thought it wasn't the right thing to do for the organization.

The strategic planning process that we did in 2001 led to all of the great success we have had to date. It was a thoughtful plan of growth, balanced with getting our financial house in order. At key points we took stock of the plan, decided not to move forward on some projects and to move faster on others. The Board of Directors has charged us to build on that success and craft the vision for the next 3 to 5 years. We will present to them a strategic plan in September that will set the map for the future.

Having said that, much of the changes that will come before us will not be what is in that plan but things that are done to us by others. The bottom line is that health care is changing every day. These changes will be imposed upon us through regulatory, customer or payer demands. The key for us will be how agile we are in adapting to the changing environment. Paramount in all of our efforts is the desire to continue to provide high quality services to our children, have a good work environment for each of us to work in and that the organization remain financially viable.
I am asking you be part of solving the challenges we find ourselves with both short term and long term. We all have to be rowing our oars in the same direction. We will continue to examine the work we do - all of it. Continuing look for ways to do things better, smarter and constantly reviewing what businesses we are in and why we are in them. This is an organization of tremendous talent and heart.

We will get there - together.

Financial Update – What You Need to Know

There will be a lot of discussion from your Director's and Managers over the coming weeks about our need to find savings. Please do not take these discussions lightly. Our May financial results reported a current LOSS of $700,000 year to date.

This is not good for many reasons. First, and simply, it is never good to lose money. It is especially bad when people loaned you $57 million to build the new hospital in New Brunswick with the intent that we would make money and run our business efficiently.

The reasons for our current financial state are three fold which involve operations, inpatient and outpatient census. The first is that we have had higher costs, energy etc, that we couldn't have anticipated. Second, we were off just 1.3 days on inpatient census and that small amount reduces our revenue by almost $500,000 through May. Third, we are 13,000 “half-hour units” below where we need to be on the outpatient side and we are struggling to fill 12 open therapy positions. All of these things have left us in this predicament.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel and I’m happy to report our census has picked up on the inpatient side thanks to the great work of our admissions team and clinical staff.

We are currently examining all of our expenses and seeing if there are things we can push off until next year or do differently to receive immediate savings. I know that when we all pull together we will identify savings.

Our Foundation has graciously agreed to pay for our recognition around the NJBIZ gifts. We are so fortunate that they are always willing to step in and support us when they can.

I personally wanted to make sure that I gave you the most current information we have because I know the rumor mill has already started.

Of course your questions and suggestions are always welcome.