This just in: Big, ponderous hospital complexes are bad! Smaller, smarter hospitals are good! Pass it on…
Post-pandemic across God’s green Earth, smaller, leaner, more cost-effective hospitals are being touted as the way of the future. From Australia to Boston and all points in between, big budget mega hospitals like Governor Leon Guerrero’s proposal for Edda Agaga are like doomed dinosaurs during falling asteroid season.
Global hospital experts agree that more elegant, more efficient, more effective hospitals combined with strong outpatient triage systems is the best medical model for island communities like Guam. A svelte, self-sustaining, elastic hospital system such as that envisioned at Ypao Point by the Guam Medical Association will provide better health care for all Guam patients right now.
Rather than forcing everyone to wait many more years for a monolithic, soul-killing, Gigantor of a “hospital” complex in the middle of nowhere, a faster, smarter, greener, better medical solution exists today!
A newly-imagined Guam Memorial Hospital at Ypao Point pays the ultimate tribute to the island virtue of Inafamaolek. The new GMH will make the highest and best use of the 45 acres of self-less sacrifice of Frank D. Perez’s best Tamuning land in the heart of Guam’s cultural and economic hub.
Unlike the money-sucking, catastrophic, financial disaster known as Edda Agaga, the Ypao Point GMH project will more likely than not provide life-giving healthcare revenue to sustainably fund the full expression of the CHamoru Cultural Center and the living Arts and Traditional Knowledge upraised there.
In fact, unlike the reckless environmental destruction of the Edda Agaga proposal, the Ypao Point GMH project manifests traditional wisdom in the most respectful Pacific Islands custom. At Ypao, ancient culture will be gloriously celebrated, babies will be birthed, lives will be saved, traditional arts will be preserved, and in the Naftan Manainata, a sacred burial ground for the re-internment of ancestral remains shall finally be built and lovingly maintained.
By decisively building a safe, clean, competently managed GMH on the gracious family land of the honorable Frank D. Perez, Guam’s only civilian public hospital will evermore be a celebration of the goodness of our proud island people.
Finally then, that wonderful public property will cease to be desecrated as a toxic dumpsite by uncaring, disrespectful GovGuam agencies. Furthermore, the GMH project will eternally protect that sacred Ypao Point land from slimy, ruthless, bourgeoise politicians ever developing that magnificent property into an evil Dragon Casino Hotel.
As we speak, a cautionary tale is unfolding about a group of hospitals previously controlled by the Archdiocese of Boston. Erstwhile medical savior, Steward Health Care is now in big trouble.
Not too long ago, Steward was the king of monster hospitals. At its peak just 3 years ago, it had bula hospitals and its leader was the darling of American Healthcare. Now, Boston politicians want to kick him all the way back to Cuba and Steward owes its landlord $50 million in overdue property rent.
Just like GMH, Steward blames meager payments from public insurance programs for causing severe financial challenges that jeopardize its ability to provide services. The problem is fundamentals. Financial records over the past 10 years show the company was suffering heavy operating losses, more than $25 million a year, just like GMH.
In response, Steward stopped paying its bills, according to hospital employees and supply vendors. Just like GMH, Steward’s financial problems led to a lack of adequate staffing and supplies in its hospital facilities. In recent months, Boston media has documented too many cases at Steward hospitals endangering the lives of vocal and foul-mouthed patients.
The magnitude of hospital financial losses in Boston threatens to bring down one of the most sophisticated healthcare systems in the world. The irony is that Steward’s financial losses are eerily similar numerically to GMH.
Meanwhile, here on Guam, our current GMH leadership thinks that $75 million operational deficits, a bloated $180 million hospital payroll, $4.9 million bogus Medicare billing contracts, and $40 million electronic medical record system purchases are all just part of a full day’s work.
Rather than support cost-effective strategic asset relocation to better align with the robust and thriving private sector, GMH management has irresponsibly endorsed an ostentatious Edda Agaga hospital complex and assumed a confrontational position against the majority of physicians who do business on Guam.
Rather than better align GMH personnel costs to improve cash flow, GMH has been proliferate at hiring expensive nonessential staff. Given GMH management’s repeated failures to regain national hospital accreditation, the facts and the data point to an imminent collapse.
Implicitly, Guam taxpayers must now recognize the distinction between a temporary interruption in a great and profitable business versus a permanent impairment of capital. GMH as currently constructed is the great impairer of all capital.
Instead of lavish dreams of a decadent hospital complex in the middle of nowhere, GMH must focus on organizational fitness. GMH must immediately reducing operating costs as the top priority. Globally, leading health systems and care providers look to their real estate to reduce costs and improve revenue.
National experts agree, real estate costs make up a significant portion of a health system’s budget, so adjusting real estate portfolios and optimizing property and facilities management can free up capital to be redeployed for patient care and related mission priorities.
Healthcare systems, providers and investors who thoroughly focus on cost optimization and revenue generation will gain a competitive advantage in this dynamically evolving industry. While it may not be able to solve every challenge healthcare systems face, sacred real estate like Ypao Point can be part of the solution for Guam.