Sandstone, Essentia fight over hospital’s future
April 3, 2012 at 7:00 pm in Duluth News Tribune
SANDSTONE Civic leaders here are crying foul over what they view as a hostile takeover of one of Sandstone’s most precious assets: a 25-bed hospital that has the only 24-hour emergency room and heliport for miles.
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I wonder if people in Virginia are reading this story? Essentia is trying to gain control of that rather large hospital, and the city’s hospital commission seems almost willing to sign an agreement with Essentia to turn the hospital over to them. Maybe the DNT should do an investigative story about the ulterior motives of Essentia management and local, community run hospitals.
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Essentia is meesing with the Ely Hospital too. Maybe all 3 smal hospitals should meet and come up with a stratgey that will be good for them. Fairview sucked up a whole bunch of small town hospitals around Forest Lake a few years ago.
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Big fish eat little fish, but in this instance the way in which Essentia went about this I believe is unethical at the least. And I seriously doubt they spent millions on a 25-bed hospital they could proably care little about. What I think may be happening is what many large hospital corporations do, which is get rid of the competition, then use the facility to “drive” patients to where they really want them, which is up in Duluth. Small rural hospitals typically are part of the lifeblood of a community, and the money they earn typically stays in the community. But when a corporation buys a small rural hospital that money flows to the corporation and the community sees little of it. In the end the community suffers. It also makes me wonder if the former management of the hospital read the fine print when they signed that contract with Essentia/SMDC years ago.
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If you have been keeping up with all the articles, it looks completely normal to me. The purchase option was not fine print, it was almost a full page contained in the contract. The contract was also review every 3 years, so that part of it had been looked at 5 times and not removed. It also seems rather moot considering when PMC first approached SMDC to buy it from the start, SMDC elected to manage it to see if it’s bottom line could improve. There is a need to keep the hospital not just for the locals, but also for the federal prision which wants to expand, which could equate to a new hospital being built in the near future. Change is going to happen as healthcare rules and regulations change. Larger companies can absorb the issues easier than a small independent could. I think it will be good for Sandstone once this gets moving forward.
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One local hospital has a slogan the “patient above all else”. Said local hospital has the smarts to at least pretend for marketing purposes that it is not driven completely and totally by the all mighty dollar… Essentia had to change it’s name because market studies had shown that the SMDC name had been damaged beyond repair. I wonder if they are already planning for the new successor to the Essentia name.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Yeah, the whole Dr. Konasiewicz saga was a great example of “patient above all else” and strengthening of brand name.
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Get your facts straight Tom, wrong hospital. The “Konasiewicz saga” was St. Lukes.
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Take a reading comprehension class, Retired148. I was referring to St. Luke’s.
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Not reading comprehension Tom, mind reading perhaps… there was no mention of St Lukes in this thread. Yeah I could have researched the slogan, my bad.
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So they are complaining that a company does not want to invest millions (during a recession) into rebuilding a hospital that by most accounts is sufficient for the patients in the area?
Perhaps they would rather Essentia spend itself into the ground, not be able to own the Sandstone hospital, and subsequently allow it to collapse under it’s own debt?
Hot debate. What do you think?
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While one can understand Sandstone’s POV, one needs to understand the dynamic of Pine County, especially Sandstone. The decisions they make in that city make Duluth look like a well-run, polished, finely-honed bastion of non-partisan cooperation & mutual understanding.
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Your comment made me laugh, it is so true. At least the Sandstone hospital doesn’t stand alone in it’s failing and being a thorn in the side for citizens the Sheriff’s department has always been giving that failed hospital a run for its money as to who is the biggest failure.
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