LETTERS: MORE SUPPORT FOR HOSPITAL MERGER

To the editor:

This is a letter that was sent to Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon:

Dear Attorney General Nixon:

I am writing to provide additional support for the merger of our two community hospitals here in Cape Girardeau, St. Francis Medical Center and Southeast Missouri Hospital. In doing so, I would like to address two specific areas that involve improved health care for our city and region.

The first issue involves reduction in the cost of health care for our community. What a number of major employers have indicated is that only through competition can health-care costs be reduced. Yet in a community our size, that is really not the case. The number of procedures divided into the cost of major equipment and staff determines the competitiveness of the product. For example, when you have two heart programs there will never be enough cases in the Cape Girardeau market to support two low-cost programs. The same would be true with neurosurgery and a number of other services that are needed in our community but cannot be moved to St. Louis or Memphis without significant loss of life due to the time involved in transportation. Remember, we are talking about the loss of life of a family member, not profit dollars on the bottom line of a corporation.

Not one of the major employers that have protested the merger would ever consider having two plants making the same thing side by side in this community. Not only would they not pay for equipment in two locations to produce their goods, they would never entertain the though of hiring two specialized work forces in the same community. In fact, most companies competing for employees would not consider building a plant here or relocating a plant to Cape Girardeau if it meant they would have to compete for employees with a direct competitor. Yet this is exactly what they are asking the hospitals to do and then to even lower their costs despite the fact that there are duplicative operations.

The second very important point is the issue of improving the quality of health care in Cape Girardeau. In a manufacturing plant, improved quality comes from careful attention to detail and having a large number of products going through the assembly line so that defects can be reduced or eliminated. A similar situation occurs in health care. The more open-heart surgeries that are performed, the more proficient the doctor becomes, and the better the outcome for the patients and the program. Unfortunately, this is difficult if not impossible for our hospitals when they are forced to maintain two separate programs with a relatively small number of procedures.

Not one of the companies against the merger has suggested a plan on how it would go about reducing costs and maintaining competition in our community. Essentially, the companies want to have their cake and eat it too by forcing pricing down for themselves and forcing pricing up for other small businesses, like mine, within the region. If the companies against the merger have a way this can be done, then they need to address that in detail with community leaders. If not, they need to give consideration and get behind programs with proven success such as Owensboro-Mercy Health System in Owensboro, Ky.; North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo, Miss.; and numerous other locations where merged or single facilities have been successful in bringing about better care at lower costs.

Health care is the largest industry in our community, and we need to be very careful so that there is not a long-term negative effect on our economy. I strongly encourage our entire community to get behind the proposed merger and work jointly together in a positive way to pull out costs from the system and improve the quality of health care.

EARL H. NORMAN, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Health Services Corporation of America

Cape Girardeau