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gating health care industry up-heaval and, in Illinois, the addednightmare of a state fiscal melt-down. Ghosh, a former businessschool dean, is pursuing growth
tied to improvements in qualityand safety, and emphasizingcancer, stroke and heart care aswell as transplant surgeries toboost the number of transfer pa-tients, which has doubled to4,000 in the last two years.
Is this helping the patient?Yes: The hospital, with nearly
19,000 admissions last year andalmost half as many surgeries,bounded up U.S. News & WorldReport’s Chicago-area rankingsthis month to No. 8 from No. 23(Northwestern Memorial re-peated in first place). The maga-zine awarded U of I Hospitalhigh scores for patient safetyand a demonstrated commit-ment to “reducing accidents andmedical mistakes.” Chief Med-ical Officer Bud Pygon says thisyear’s list assigns more weight topatient mortality rates, an insti-tutional strength.
No: The hospital got just one offive possible stars from the federalgovernment’s Centers for Medi-care and Medicaid Services,which cited patient satisfaction is-sues and higher reimbursementpenalties associated with read-mission rates. Next-door John H.Stroger Jr. Hospital got two stars,and nearby Rush University Med-ical Center received four.
Barish, who is proud of his hos-pital’s standings on the U.S. Newslist, discounts the one-star rating:“You’re not getting credit for themost severe cases.”
Both Barish, 63, and Ghosh, 65,are newcomers to the hospital.Barish arrived in January, havingbeen chancellor of the LouisianaState University Health SciencesCenter at Shreveport, which hesays was “great training” inlearning to cope with last-minutelegislative whims in another infa-mously corrupt state govern-ment. (A synergy-seeking reorga-nization two years ago put Bar-
ish’s job under the UIC chancel-lor instead of the university’s sys-temwide president and broad-ened its mandate beyond healthcare delivery to include sevenhealth science colleges.)
Ghosh, who also has an MBA,was business dean on the Ur-bana-Champaign campus and,later, university vice president fortechnology and economic devel-opment before coming to thehospital in 2014.
FUNDING SHRINKSThey are in a tough spot as state
funding for public universitiesshrinks. “The new leadership werecruited is very, very good. I feelsorry for them,” says Paul Brandt-Rauf, who is resigning after eightyears as dean of UIC’s School ofPublic Health to become, in Feb-ruary, dean of a new biomedicalengineering, science and healthsystems school at Drexel Univer-sity in Philadelphia. The state
budget farce figured in his deci-sion, he says, adding, “I can’t tellyou how many people called meup and said, ‘Take me with you.’ ”
Barish notes that the hospitaldoesn’t rely heavily on state fund-ing, but it is dependent on Medic-aid reimbursements, which havebeen slowed by the budget de-bacle.
Making matters worse, insteadof dealing with the state as a sin-gle payer, the hospital has con-tracts with six Medicaid man-aged-care companies, forcing itto add 100 employees by year-end to the 380 who clear medicalprocedures with insurers. Ghoshnotes that one self-insured stateplan is 400 days late in processingpayments.
The hospital’s MBAs, who in-clude Jodi Joyce, a registerednurse hired four years ago to fill anew position overseeing qualityand patient safety, are looking forfactory floor-like efficiencies toboost productivity and revenue,and to improve employee safety.Compared with two years ago,when 85 percent of patientsstayed past 5 p.m., half are dis-charged by 2 p.m., says DaleBeatty, chief nursing officer. Py-gon, the chief medical officer,says orthopedic surgery-relatedstays have been cut in half.
Simply put, these measuresfree up capacity. Lowering stub-bornly persistent readmissionrates will, too. Joyce says the hos-pital has trimmed them by 2 per-cent since late 2012, with sickle-cell anemia patients, many lack-ing home-front support, ac-counting for 30 percent of the1,560 readmissions in the 12months that ended in January.
In the last two years, the hos-pital’s government-imposedpenalties associated with read-missions have nearly doubled to0.27 percent of Medicaid reim-bursements and are set to rise to0.37 percent in fiscal 2017, whichstill comes to about half the na-tional average. “It looks like arounding error, but when you’retalking about hundreds of mil-lions of dollars, that really addsup,” says Allan Baumgarten, aMinneapolis-based consultantand author of Illinois HealthMarket Review.
Fred Lee’s Disney hospitalbook might guide Barish here.Chapter 1 advises, “Focus onwhat can’t be measured.”
Contact: [email protected]
12 AUGUST 15, 2016 • CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS
To place your Career Salute announcement contact Laura Warren at 773-814-3898 or
email [email protected] • www.chicagobusiness.com
CAREER SALUTES Advertising Supplement
Tripp Lite a Chicago-based electronics
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A graduate of DePaul, he began
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Tripp Lite currently employs over
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“Mike’s steady hand and reliable business judgment have helped guide the Tripp Lite ship to year after year of profitable, record- setting sales. He is both loved and respected in the Tripp Lite family. We are extremely proud of his achievements and congratulate him on his 50 years of success at Tripp Lite,” said Barre Seid,
Tripp Lite’s Chairman.
Founded in Chicago in
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Janie Krohmer, [email protected]
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HOSPITAL from Page 1
Not happiest place on Earth, but it has a plan
Robert Barish, left, vice chancellor for health affairs, and CEO Avijit Ghosh.
TODD
WIN
TERS
20160815News---0012-NAT-CCI-CCB-- 8/12/2016 3:57 PM Page 1
