Blessing Health System issued the following announcement on Jan. 24.
Blessing Health System leaders detailed the organization’s opposition to a Quincy Medical Group plan at a public hearing held in Quincy on Thursday, January 24, by the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board.
Quincy Medical Group proposes to open an outpatient surgery center in a portion of the space that formerly housed the Bergner’s store in the Quincy Mall. The new center would be a for-profit service, in direct competition with the current, non-profit outpatient surgery center currently serving the Quincy area.
Blessing’s opposition is based on the following:
1. Duplication: The QMG proposal is a duplication of services. Blessing and QMG already offer an outpatient surgery center on the QMG campus at 11th and Hampshire. Blessing owns the service and QMG manages it. This has been a successful arrangement for more than 10 years now meeting the area’s need for outpatient surgery. Blessing would have no role in the proposed center. A second outpatient surgery center is not needed.
2. Damage to the Safety Net and Community Benefit programs and services: Much of the revenue Blessing generates from outpatient surgery is used to fulfill its not-for-profit mission of providing Safety Net services to the region. These Safety Net services include behavioral health care and trauma care. The Institute of Medicine defines the health care safety net as those providers who organize and deliver a significant level of health care and other related services to uninsured, Medicaid, and other vulnerable populations. The health care safety net is vital to the health of our communities and Blessing is the only provider in the region who offers these critical services. Insurance reimbursement does not provide adequate support for the delivery of inpatient behavioral medicine and trauma care. Opening a second surgery center would result in a loss to the current surgery center of nearly 12,000 cases and revenue of $25-$41 million. A significant portion of that revenue is needed by the community to keep Safety Net services operational.
Additionally, as a non-profit healthcare provider, Blessing provides financial support to the education of healthcare professionals (Blessing-Rieman College of Nursing & Health Sciences and the SIU Family Medicine Residency Program, an award-winning program that provides specialty training to new family physicians); and charity care to those in need of healthcare, regardless of their ability to pay. While these are not Safety Net services, these are important community benefit investments programs that cannot sustain themselves financially and rely on Blessing’s support. The loss of outpatient surgery revenue threatens these and other community benefit programs.
UnityPoint, Quincy Medical Group’s Des Moines, Iowa-based business partner, would be a 40 percent owner of the proposed surgery center. Therefore, a portion of the profits from the proposed center could leave the Quincy area.
3. Job loss: Opening of a second surgery center would cost jobs. Blessing could lose approximately 400 jobs through the loss of a significant portion of is outpatient surgery business.
4. The community deserves cooperation: What is in the communities’ best interest is for Blessing and QMG to continue cooperation in the delivery of key services. This has been successful with the current outpatient surgery center and with the Cancer Center. Blessing wants to continue working with QMG, and not be put in a position to work against them, in improving the health of our communities.
The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board will issue a final ruling on the Quincy Medical Group outpatient surgery center proposal on March 5, 2019.
Original source can be found here.
Source: Blessing Health System
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