Press
Action needed at The Med
State and local officials should be involved in a discussion of whether the hospital is treated fairly.
CommercialAppeal.com
February 13, 2010
Shelby County Commissioner Mike Ritz might be right. Maybe the state of Tennessee bears some of the blame for financial tremors at the Regional Medical Center at Memphis.
But the civil rights complaint he fired off on County Commission stationery to the Department of Health and Human Services probably should have been run by a few other people in local government.
And its initial impact was to give state officials a rationale for shutting down negotiations with The Med over the distribution of federal funds for uncompensated care.
That's not to say that Ritz's complaint is incorrect. Perhaps a case could be made that if there is a shortage it discriminates against minorities, who make up a majority of patients and employees at The Med.
Tennessee gives The Med about $42 million in various programs, on top of about $60 million in TennCare payments for services to enrollees.
But the $42 million is about a third of federal aid sent to the state as a result of unpaid care at The Med.
But that doesn't prove that the distribution is intended to discriminate.
And the time it would take to prosecute a discrimination complaint might be better spent if, instead, everyone who recognizes that The Med is in dire financial straits would work together.
Unfortunately, the dispute is getting personal. The testiness began with Gov. Phil Bredesen's dismissal of The Med's plea for more consideration as, essentially, premature and not justified.
What is needed is the immediate appointment of a task force made up of top officials at the state, city and county level that would be given 60 days to thoroughly sort out the issues and recommend a fix.
Get state constitutional officers, the finance commissioner, the Memphis and Shelby County mayors, Med board members and others in the room, along with the tenacious Mike Ritz, of course, to explore a number of questions that have not been fully fleshed out.
The primary issue, of course: Is the state's distribution formula for federal funds for uncompensated care faulty or fair?
Also: Is The Med really doing all it can to operate efficiently? Bredesen doesn't think so. This panel should find out. And the ultimate question: What should the long-term future of The Med be?
The task force could use as its model the summit called by then-governor Lamar Alexander in 1985 to come up with a plan to persuade St. Jude Children's Research Hospital not to follow through on a plan to leave Memphis for St. Louis.
The Med is perhaps even more important to Memphis and the region, and its problems are real.
