Many organizations use a strategic management process to analyze their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges. The process is used to prepare an overall business strategy, balancing trade-offs, setting a course of action for meeting short and long-term goals. Done properly, and to remain efficient, it will also allow flexibility to make adjustments for changing markets and/or resources. It is a respected business practice for success and should be part of any hospital reopening discussion.
Westwood, HUMC, Valley Hospital, Englewood Hospital, each have a strategic interest individually, and with the Department of Health collectively, in a Pascack Valley hospital. Their decisions will be motivated from different perspectives and their resulting actions and timing will decide the outcome.
Westwood is, or should be, considering and balancing the impact of a 20-acre site that has spent half a century influencing its growth, and the surrounding communities. It has already experienced a new source of tax revenue that enabled it to avoid a property tax increase in an environment of reduced tax collections. Just one aspect in a complex situation where priorities and a strategic plan, or lack thereof, will influence the future of a site and a community.
HUMC has been experiencing a swirl of activity from an expanding multimillion-dollar cancer center to partnering and acquiring a 20-acre opportunity. Activity complicated with a restructuring of operations and management. While their purchase has shown flexibility in its process, it has been less than efficient. That factor is allowing possibilities to be complicated, raising opportunity costs and risking their investment’s net present value.
Valley and Englewood Hospital are fighting the possibility of a returned hospital. They hope that the reduced competition will be a forced boon to their operations. For Valley, its management is intelligent enough to succeed whether or not a hospital returned to Westwood. A smaller facility would be workable but none would make them happier, offering more revenue flexibility to any missteps in their “renewal” expansion.
Englewood Hospital on the other hand has shown a decade of inconsistent financial results. Therefore any alleged opportunity for increasing revenues is welcome. However, as a recent article pointed out, after 2 years a closed hospital 8+ miles away hasn’t offered them a hallelujah moment. The challenges of Medicare reform, managed care and medical advances will not somehow be lessened by decreasing beds and access elsewhere. Their economic deliverance will be rooted in an organization that understands the realities of a market in constant motion, and can visualize market demographic opportunities without hallucinatory drugs.
If you analyze the demographics noted below, for each hospital’s service area, you can see several points. Two quick ones, the statement that reopening a smaller facility in Westwood would be to the detriment of blacks is a shortsighted and ignorant assertion. HUMC has a similar sized black community and is financially successful. Holy Name Hospital has a larger black population, and is also financially successful. Acknowledging a black community may play well in political sound bites, but is not a default to Englewood Hospital’s troubles.
Englewood Hospital is 2.8 miles as the crow flies from Holy Name Hospital, or 4.3 miles and 11 minutes by car. HUMC is 4.9 miles as the crow flies from Englewood Hospital, or 8.1 miles and 15 minutes by car. That adds up a total of 1683 ‘licensed’ beds within a 5-mile distance inclusive of Englewood. Is the problem simply too many beds or poor management of resources?
Another point that can be seen, the Pascack Valley hospital service area has a need for a small hospital. Valley Hospital’s occupancy rate exceeds the State Report’s ideal occupancy. Englewood Hospital’s needs go beyond defining beds as money. Therefore treating patients like mice, forcing them through an urban maze into competing beds is not an answer to rationalizing health care.
Unfortunately pondering other points and the DOH’s decision concerns are of no value. Licensed beds, maintained beds, occupancy rates, hospital management, Board oversights, physical access, utilization factors, economics, operational efficiency, physician dynamics, regulation, transparency and accountability, collectively should influence any hospital operation decision; if the ‘New Jersey Commission on Rationalizing Health Care Resources’ report is to have any value. Since no application to reopen a hospital is pending, the DOH has no decision to make.
Regrettably it is the individual player’s decisions that will affect the outcome of a hospital’s return to Westwood; led by either Westwood or HUMC. Since Westwood hasn’t displayed any business acumen in the last 22 months, I’m betting on HUMC. Their past offers empirical evidence that they are innovative and value common sense. They’ve created visions and built on opportunity. The 20-acre site in Westwood, with a certificate of need, is an opportunity with limitless possibilities. The risk in this bet is tied to time, an aspect that waits on no one.
You seem a little aggressive toward Englewood Hospital. They’re just trying to survive. You guys are doing alright without it.
Comment by fetch — November 24, 2009 @ 5:40 PM
Aggressive? You call what’s been said aggressive? Our hospital was closed and these hospitals were offering millions to keep it closed. This isn’t China where accessible health care is rationed.
Comment by oneone — November 25, 2009 @ 9:00 PM
I see businesses closing in Westwood some say its because the hospital closed, some the economy. Where I work we were asked to work less hours so everyone could have a job. I didn’t like it but I still have a job. Life is tough but you adjust or lose. Management made decisions to protect the business and its people. It adjusted to the situation that’s what responsible management does. It doesn’t waste money keeping the competition from opening. It offers quality service and a reason for its customers to keep coming back. Englewood’s management obviously hasn’t been doing their job so they deserve the criticism.
Comment by Cooper — November 26, 2009 @ 11:15 AM
Westwood is disappointing. We got Washington bickering with healthcare with no idea what they’re doing, and like Westwood, end up being ineffective. Net present value? We need a hospital in Westwood and we need healthcare reform but we have politicians when we should have business people. People wonder why we vote on hope? What else do we have?
Comment by Brad — November 24, 2009 @ 8:06 PM
Englewood is pretty close to other hospitals. Possibly the close competition is their problem. What would happen if it closed?
Comment by Tyred — November 25, 2009 @ 7:56 AM
How come the holy name hospital is able to succeed and they’re between two hospitals. Is there something wrong with Englewood that people don’t go there?
Comment by Cala — November 25, 2009 @ 9:47 AM
If Englewood is still struggling to make money then maybe they’re not getting the patients from Westwood? Where are they going?
Comment by Sean — November 25, 2009 @ 1:26 PM
You cite the profitability of hospitals servicing the same sized black populations. Blacks have jobs. They have health insurance. Englewood would have you think they are some great burden. Making blacks the scapegoat for Englewoods failures is insulting. Its not true. Its a stereotype.
Comment by tommy — November 26, 2009 @ 12:18 AM
The turkey’s roasting in many homes today but I think Valley and Englewood have been roasting for their thanksgiving the last two years. We can only trust it burns and we get a hospital back.
Comment by rochelle — November 26, 2009 @ 12:21 PM
Your ethnic percentages imply a predominately white region in the Westwood market area. Since its Bergen County it doesn’t require a business degree to see what a forprofit hospital might see there. Almost as good as Valley’s market. That tells me Valley won’t be hurt by a small hospital reopening; and where Englewood is situated with continued losses, it wouldn’t make enough of a difference for them either. It certainly makes you think Pascack Valley was thoroughly misrun.
Comment by Josue — November 26, 2009 @ 2:36 PM
Pascack was mismanaged when it planned their expansion years ago. It seems that the town should have been more involved even back then. The property wasn’t paying taxes and what happen there was obviously important to us as a community. Its no different now. That property’s use is important to us and no one knows what’s going on. You read the papers and this thing and you still know nothing. At least with this thing you get an idea of how everyone’s playing to their own interests, not ours.
Comment by ygoot — November 28, 2009 @ 5:32 PM
How come we hear so little out of Hackensack Hospital these days? They were the topic of discussion on the table this afternoon.
The only people who think we don’t need this hospital are young, healthy or don’t have anyone at risk living in the area. At our table we had 4 seniors, all with health problems and thankfully seven healthy children, all prone to accidents. Your ad in the paper before the election drove a true point of concern. We don’t know what the future holds and for those to say we don’t need this, they’re meshuggeneh.
Comment by Michael E — November 26, 2009 @ 9:03 PM
Not China but on the road to Canada or Great Britain if Pelosi and Reed get their way. Trenton is halfway there, strangling private investment in a Westwood hospital.
Comment by TomTom — November 28, 2009 @ 10:37 PM
It looks like everyone’s giving up. You too? We got Englewood saying they can’t survive with any additional competition and Valley is looking to increase their monopoly. HUMC talks with little enthusiasm, not much to believe in there. It would have been nice to have had our hospital reopened for Christmas but with each passing day its obvious the flame of passion is dimming. It would have been nice too if we could have had more then words of hope offered by our politicians.
Comment by Reg — December 2, 2009 @ 8:02 PM
I read the Community Life on the way into work and almost laughed out loud. There was an article on the hospital where your Councilwoman Waneck supposedly asked the county to place the hospital in its master plan. Why doesn’t she start with your master plan ordinance and require a hospital? Wasn’t it a point in your suit?
Comment by Derick1 — December 4, 2009 @ 12:18 PM