HOSPITALS OFFER SOLID PLAN FOR THE FUTURE

The announcement Wednesday that Cape Girardeau's two hospitals have agreed that merging would be in the best interest of health care in this area was major news. The hospitals, both of which are proud of their excellent facilities and staffs, face new challenges in today's medical environment. Without a merger, they have concluded, undesirable outcomes would be inevitable. For example, the hospitals could face insurmountable financial pressures, or one or both of the hospitals could be taken over by huge corporations with headquarters far from Cape Girardeau. Neither of these options is particularly appealing, especially in a community that has been served well by two locally governed medical facilities.

There can be little doubt that merging the two hospitals would produce operating efficiencies that would translate into concrete cost savings. Eventual ownership by a for-profit hospital corporation would mean those cost savings would become profits for the owners and their shareholders. But both Southeast Missouri Hospital and St. Francis Medical Center are not-for-profit hospitals. Even after a merger, they would continue as a not-for-profit entity. Any savings should be passed along to the community. This was a key point for the study committee that has been working on the merger discussions and for the boards of both hospitals.

To make sure any cost savings -- projected to be $44 million over the next five years -- would translate into health-care savings, the hospitals will seek a consent decree from the Missouri attorney general. The purpose of this step is put teeth in the pledges to cut costs and pass along savings, with oversight from the state's top law enforcement official. If the hospitals succeed in working out the details of a plan with the attorney general -- and there is no reason to believe they won't -- the merger plan will be further girded for what is anticipated to be opposition from the U.S. Department of Justice. The Justice Department, of course, will view the proposed merger from the perspective of antitrust laws and whether or not the hospitals' service area would benefit or be hurt by a merger.

Certainly the hospital merger plan needs to pass stiff Justice Department scrutiny. In the deliberative process leading up to the merger proposal, officials of both hospitals have kept this need uppermost. It is only because the study committee and the hospitals' boards see immense enormous benefits to this area that they have moved ahead with the merger proposal. Getting the Missouri attorney general involved is simply another way of reinforcing those benefits.

There are other components of the merger proposal that are calculated to produce positive health-care results for this area. For example, the merged hospitals would upgrade and increase medical care for those who, for one reason or another, don't get proper health care.

And there is a human factor involved in the proposal that can't be overlooked: What impact will this plan have on the current employees of the two hospitals? Right now, the hospitals have some 3,000 employees. It is expected that about 100 of those jobs would be lost due to the merger. Many of those would be eliminated through normal attrition. It is to the credit of the study group that it foresees millions of dollars of savings without slashing a large number of employees. This represents both a commitment to a high level of service as well as a special consideration for the many fine employees currently working at both hospitals.

There will be many, many questions as the community learns more details about the merger plan. A special meeting will be held Sept. 22 at Osage Community Center to hear those questions and to provide answers. As those questions are answered, it can be anticipated that the community will unite behind the merger plan and show its strong support.