It is true that being nominated is an honor, as it is recogniton for a job well done -- but it is also really cool to actually WIN! Each year as summer ends, we learn how our creative and written work has been judged by a group of our peers in the Missouri Hospital Association Show-Me Awards. Thanks to BJC HealthCare's very talented designers, writers, photographers and media staff we generally get to move beyond the honor of the nomination. A hearty congratulations to all of those on our corporate team who had the opportunity to hear "And the Winner Is...." for various projects. With first place honors, the winners are: BJC Media Services, Donna Dalessandro, Kristine Brookes-Quinn, Jane House and Beth Tuttle. With second place wins: Sylvia Sharockman, Lauran Morgan and Kristine Brooks-Quinn. Finally, with third place honors: Tim Mudrovic, Donnal Dalessandro, BJC Media Services, Karen Stewart and Jane House. Congratulations to all of our team members for jobs well done. As you think back over the past year, can you share a project that you worked on that made you really proud? There are many for me, but one that comes to mind is the I-64 closure and making sure we were prepared, rather than panicked. How about you?
J
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Why I Love My Job
Okay guys,
This one will be longer than my last, but it truly speaks to why I am so proud to work for BJC HealthCare. I feel very fortunate that most days I truly do love my job (notice, I said "most" not "all"). I have worked for government, private industry and now not-for-profit and found really smart people in all three sectors. But, nowhere have I found employees so committed to their mission as in health care. As you read the commentary below by Steve, I hope it helps you remember the very good work that is done each and everyday at BJC HealthCare and the very important part you play in making it happen!
J
Community Benefit goes beyond Charity Care
Last month, a woman arrived in the emergency department. She was alone, she was in pain and she was frightened. To make matters worse, she did not speak English. She was unable to tell the doctor and nurse what was wrong, and she could not understand the questions they asked of her. Within a few minutes, an interpreter arrived from the hospital’s refugee health and interpreter services, a free service available around the clock to bridge the language and cultural gap between patients and caregivers. The relief of being able to communicate undoubtedly served to lessen the anxiety of the patient’s medical crisis. Hers is one of more than 32,000 such encounters each year that are made possible through this special service at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
Is providing an interpreter for non-English speaking patients a benefit to patients and the community? Is such a benefit of as much value as charity care?
Apparently not, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In recent coverage (a business section article on Sept. 3 followed by an editorial on Sept. 7), the newspaper espouses a narrow definition of “community benefit” as charity care and charity care alone.
In reality, charity care is only one element of community benefit – albeit an important and obvious one. In 2007, the hospitals of BJC HealthCare provided more than $50 million in charity care, more than any other health care organization in Missouri. BJC also subsidized $230 million in underpayments from Medicare and Medicaid and provided an additional $68 million in unreimbursed care that patients were unable to afford.
Our charity care programs are among the most generous in the nation. Many programs across the country provide discounts for family incomes up to 200% of the federal poverty limit while BJC offers discounts for patients in families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level. Additionally, as part of a pending lawsuit settlement, BJC has enhanced this program by offering automatic discounts of 25% for any patient without insurance, regardless of their income.
Misrepresentations continue to appear in the news media regarding nonprofit hospitals and charity care. What seems to repeatedly get lost in translation is that charity care is just one aspect of the obligation hospitals have to their communities. Nonprofit hospitals, in return for their tax-free status, are obligated to provide many community benefits to those they serve. In a community without a public hospital, maintaining nonprofit status for hospitals is the best way to ensure the uninsured and underinsured continue to have access to vital health care services. While taxing hospitals would provide revenues to local, state and federal governments, there is no guarantee that those revenues would be used to provide access to health care for the uninsured.
The definition of community benefit extends beyond this uncompensated care, however, to vital services and programs that would not and could not exist unless hospitals provided them. For example, BJC invested more than $80 million in medical and nursing education, contributed nearly $16 million toward bio-medical research and provided more than $14 million in community outreach efforts during 2007.
That’s a total of $458 million in free medical care, health professions education, medical research and community benefit programs like interpreter services, mammography screenings for low-income women, health screenings in underserved communities and teen smoking cessation programs in area schools, to name but a few. These community benefit programs are no less important than direct medical care, but they go unreported by the Post-Dispatch, and appear to be less appreciated and under-valued. Taken together, these community benefit expenditures add up to almost 15% of BJC operating revenues – substantially more than the 1.75% of revenues attributable to charity care alone.
To someone in medical distress, who does not speak English, or to a woman who cannot otherwise afford a mammogram or to a teen on the brink of a lifelong addiction to nicotine, these programs can and do make an immediate and important difference. Rather than being ignored or disregarded, community benefit programs should be encouraged and embraced by the Post-Dispatch as true investments in the community, just like charity care.
Steven H. Lipstein
President & Chief Executive Officer
BJC HealthCare
This one will be longer than my last, but it truly speaks to why I am so proud to work for BJC HealthCare. I feel very fortunate that most days I truly do love my job (notice, I said "most" not "all"). I have worked for government, private industry and now not-for-profit and found really smart people in all three sectors. But, nowhere have I found employees so committed to their mission as in health care. As you read the commentary below by Steve, I hope it helps you remember the very good work that is done each and everyday at BJC HealthCare and the very important part you play in making it happen!
J
Community Benefit goes beyond Charity Care
Last month, a woman arrived in the emergency department. She was alone, she was in pain and she was frightened. To make matters worse, she did not speak English. She was unable to tell the doctor and nurse what was wrong, and she could not understand the questions they asked of her. Within a few minutes, an interpreter arrived from the hospital’s refugee health and interpreter services, a free service available around the clock to bridge the language and cultural gap between patients and caregivers. The relief of being able to communicate undoubtedly served to lessen the anxiety of the patient’s medical crisis. Hers is one of more than 32,000 such encounters each year that are made possible through this special service at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
Is providing an interpreter for non-English speaking patients a benefit to patients and the community? Is such a benefit of as much value as charity care?
Apparently not, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In recent coverage (a business section article on Sept. 3 followed by an editorial on Sept. 7), the newspaper espouses a narrow definition of “community benefit” as charity care and charity care alone.
In reality, charity care is only one element of community benefit – albeit an important and obvious one. In 2007, the hospitals of BJC HealthCare provided more than $50 million in charity care, more than any other health care organization in Missouri. BJC also subsidized $230 million in underpayments from Medicare and Medicaid and provided an additional $68 million in unreimbursed care that patients were unable to afford.
Our charity care programs are among the most generous in the nation. Many programs across the country provide discounts for family incomes up to 200% of the federal poverty limit while BJC offers discounts for patients in families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level. Additionally, as part of a pending lawsuit settlement, BJC has enhanced this program by offering automatic discounts of 25% for any patient without insurance, regardless of their income.
Misrepresentations continue to appear in the news media regarding nonprofit hospitals and charity care. What seems to repeatedly get lost in translation is that charity care is just one aspect of the obligation hospitals have to their communities. Nonprofit hospitals, in return for their tax-free status, are obligated to provide many community benefits to those they serve. In a community without a public hospital, maintaining nonprofit status for hospitals is the best way to ensure the uninsured and underinsured continue to have access to vital health care services. While taxing hospitals would provide revenues to local, state and federal governments, there is no guarantee that those revenues would be used to provide access to health care for the uninsured.
The definition of community benefit extends beyond this uncompensated care, however, to vital services and programs that would not and could not exist unless hospitals provided them. For example, BJC invested more than $80 million in medical and nursing education, contributed nearly $16 million toward bio-medical research and provided more than $14 million in community outreach efforts during 2007.
That’s a total of $458 million in free medical care, health professions education, medical research and community benefit programs like interpreter services, mammography screenings for low-income women, health screenings in underserved communities and teen smoking cessation programs in area schools, to name but a few. These community benefit programs are no less important than direct medical care, but they go unreported by the Post-Dispatch, and appear to be less appreciated and under-valued. Taken together, these community benefit expenditures add up to almost 15% of BJC operating revenues – substantially more than the 1.75% of revenues attributable to charity care alone.
To someone in medical distress, who does not speak English, or to a woman who cannot otherwise afford a mammogram or to a teen on the brink of a lifelong addiction to nicotine, these programs can and do make an immediate and important difference. Rather than being ignored or disregarded, community benefit programs should be encouraged and embraced by the Post-Dispatch as true investments in the community, just like charity care.
Steven H. Lipstein
President & Chief Executive Officer
BJC HealthCare
Thursday, September 11, 2008
It is Easier Being Green
Hi to All:
The "Go Green" Theme of our recent BJC Communications & Marketing Conference, led me to rethink my skepticism about this concept. Remembering all to well the last time our country embarked on environmental consciousness in the late 70s and early 80s (in fact my 1978 unairconditoned Plymouth Horizon was immortalized in a long gasoline waiting line photograph in the local newspaper), I told myself -- "this too shall pass." But, this time there does seem to be something different as 'green' seems to have gone mainstream.
So, I have gotten on the green bandwagon or more accurately, the Metro. For the most part, I have parked my car and am taking Metro to get to and from work and to and from meetings that I have in Clayton and downtown. Because BJC offers the Metro pass discount, I am not only being green, but saving green. I am fortunate to live and work very close to Metro stops which has made it easy for me to get out of my car. However, in keeping with the lessons from our conference, there are lots of things we can all do to incorporate more 'green' into our actions and I encourage you to try some. Would love to hear ideas about what you are doing or may do to 'Go Green.'
J
The "Go Green" Theme of our recent BJC Communications & Marketing Conference, led me to rethink my skepticism about this concept. Remembering all to well the last time our country embarked on environmental consciousness in the late 70s and early 80s (in fact my 1978 unairconditoned Plymouth Horizon was immortalized in a long gasoline waiting line photograph in the local newspaper), I told myself -- "this too shall pass." But, this time there does seem to be something different as 'green' seems to have gone mainstream.
So, I have gotten on the green bandwagon or more accurately, the Metro. For the most part, I have parked my car and am taking Metro to get to and from work and to and from meetings that I have in Clayton and downtown. Because BJC offers the Metro pass discount, I am not only being green, but saving green. I am fortunate to live and work very close to Metro stops which has made it easy for me to get out of my car. However, in keeping with the lessons from our conference, there are lots of things we can all do to incorporate more 'green' into our actions and I encourage you to try some. Would love to hear ideas about what you are doing or may do to 'Go Green.'
J
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