OC REGISTER -Reasons to sell Anaheim Memorial Hospital

It appears that the OC Watchdog has become more of a Rooster by publishing the salaries of the Executive Officers of the local hospitals. We thank the OC Register for doing that work.

Please check out the OC Register site at:
http://taxdollars.freedomblogging.com/2008/09/02/anaheim-memorial-medical-center-reasons-for-sale/

OC Watchdog has been commenting upon the reasons for the sales of Anaheim Memorial Hospital

Isn't it unfortunate the way some business conduct is recharacterized in less injurious words?

Look at this phraseology...
"AMMC’s service area has an increasingly unfavorable payer mix of patients and generally declining market conditions;"

Let's rephrase this in more direct verbage.
Anaheim Memorial serves the poor (also known as "unfavorable payer mix").

Declining market conditions means that the people are sick and need expensive interventions to live.


"AMMC’s market share has been stagnant"
This means that Anaheim Memorial has been unable to balance the poor reimbursements from Cal Optima against the cost shifting from privately insured patients. The reason is that the Sisters of St. Joseph are blocking enrollment on two sides of their area (with St. Judes pushing from the north and St. Joseph's pushing from the south). The area of best growth would have been Anaheim Hills, but the attempt by Anaheim Memorial to build a satellite medical office building failed in the late 1990's with the sales of the building to the City of Anaheim.


" and is unlikely to grow in the face of powerful Orange County competitors that were already well underway with seismic retrofit and facility expansion plans;"

This refers to the funding that St. Joseph's hospital and CHOC received from the California State Government's Office of State Health Planning and Development. Apparently, the Memorial care hospitals have been unable to receive equal access to these funds in the OC.