Improving community health is a goal for every provider, but rarely does a healthcare system reach that goal by selling its flagship urban medical center.
In 1993, Georgia Baptist Health Care System, based in Atlanta, began implementing a strategic plan to build a community health network around its 460-bed Georgia Baptist Medical Center. However, the system later sold its main hospital to for-profit Tenet Healthcare Corp. for $263 million in 1997 and used much of the proceeds to build partnerships with failing hospitals and communities in need.
The Georgia Baptist system has improved access to care and raised community confidence in three local hospitals: 105-bed Baptist Meriwether Hospital in Warm Springs, 50-bed Baptist Hospital Worth County in Sylvester and 36-bed Baptist North Hospital in Cumming. The system also recently began managing 38-bed Baptist Medical Center Dooly in Vienna and is negotiating agreements with four other hospitals in the state.
"We could not see any future for us as a stand-alone medical center in downtown Atlanta because there was too much competition," says David Harrell, the system's president and chief executive officer. "Our goal now is to go into communities that need help, where we're welcome."
For its rural community health partnerships, Georgia Baptist has won this year's Sodexho Marriott service award in the vision category.
Improvements at each facility include providing 24-hour emergency services, upgrading information systems, modernizing the physical plants, using a helicopter service to transport trauma patients from rural areas and providing community outreach programs and counseling centers. A new administrator was also hired for each facility.
Georgia Baptist also has been able to achieve financial turnarounds at the hospitals. Baptist Hospital Worth County, which Georgia Baptist acquired in October 1996, posted $5.9 million in revenues for the year ended Dec. 31, 1996, but lost almost $300,000. This year, the hospital estimates it will post net income of about $500,000 on revenues of $10.6 million, says Billy Hayes, the hospital's administrator.
Most significant are the changes at the facility in Cumming. When Georgia Baptist acquired it in 1992, the 30-bed hospital was nearly shut down. It had no physicians and wasn't generating any revenues, Harrell says. Georgia Baptist made a commitment to build a new hospital in the community. The system is developing a new campus in Cumming with an $18.5 million, 41-bed hospital, medical office building and assisted-living facility. The new hospital is set to open in March 1999. It will be expanded as the population grows.
In the meantime, the system improved the hospital. The facility now employs 101 physicians and has an average occupancy of 70%. It also has an additional 5,000 square feet for emergency services and outpatient services.
"The response from the community is overwhelming," says John Herron, administrator of Baptist North, which will change its name to Baptist Medical Center Cumming when the new campus is completed. "The people are very supportive and have shown great interest. People came back to use the current facility. They wrote letters to support our certificate of need (for the new facility) during the appeals process. We also had citizens testify on our behalf."
At every turn, Georgia Baptist strives to involve community leaders to improve the local hospitals and provide a complete continuum of care, executives say. In each community, Georgia Baptist met with local leaders, including government representatives, hospital staff, members of the chambers of commerce, school superintendents and business leaders.
Many community suggestions were included in improvements at the hospitals. For example, at Baptist Meriwether, the community wanted bathrooms in all patient rooms, 24-hour emergency services and school health programs, all of which were implemented.
The change in focus for Georgia Baptist has resulted in a change in its mission.
"We realized we have something we can offer to rural communities, rather than being a competitor in the urban market," says Nancy Paris, Georgia Baptist's vice president of community health services. "Every organization that we worked with had a crisis in confidence. We thought our history and reputation could be leveraged to recruit the right leaders and help the communities access quality healthcare. We would be vigilant in making ourselves available to the entire community."
