By NICK BUDNICK/The Lund Report
COOS BAY — At least eight health systems, including some in Oregon, are interested in operating Bay Area Hospital as leaders of the Coos Bay faciilty look for a partner to help with its longstanding financial woes.
Starting Sept. 3, executives of the hospital and its board will start evaluating the proposals, although they won’t be made public. Although it is operated by one of several health districts in Oregon, its leaders say they won’t disclose the names of potential partners to honor their desire for confidentiality.
The largest hospital on Oregon’s coast, it employs more than 1,000 people, making it the largest employer on Oregon’s south coast. Despite being a government entity. But its leaders say they are confident that their community understands the need for secrecy.
“We’ll be waiting until that that that final firm is selected, Brian Moore, the hospital’s president and CEO, told The Lund Report in an interview. “The reason being is we’ve got non-disclosure agreements in place. And while Bay Area Hospital is a public district, we’ve got private entities participating that may not have the same … desires and openness.”
The board will be asked to decide among the competing proposals the “two or three” most appealing alternatives in mid-September, less than two weeks after the final proposals are due. Moore said the board should make a decision by November, calling the timeline “ambitious.” Some time after a notice of intent is signed by the board, the partner entity will be made public.
Losses driving change
Financial losses, particularly in fiscal year 2022, are driving the change. During the pandemic years when many hospitals struggled financially, the 172-bed coastal hospital was among the worst.
In December 2022 outside auditors reported that the hospital was in such poor financial shape that there was “substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”
According to Moore, hospital leaders first asked about the alternatives, “How much can we do our own pull ourselves up by our bootstraps? And you know, we’ve had a $53 million turnaround in the last two years. So that’s fantastic.”
But he added, “we continue to face pressures where our costs are going up faster than our revenue.
The hospital announced the process earlier this summer while opening up a process to gauge public opinion.
The board heard the results of the survey in a public meeting Tuesday evening. It also heard testimony from members of the public, including concerns about who might be selected to operate the hospital.
Moore, for his part, told The Lund Report the hospital district will be researching applicants, meeting with them, even touring their facilities to make sure it’s the right fit.
“It’s definitely a balanced approach and not just a financial decision from the board’s perspective,” he said.
- The Lund Reportis an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit, online news source covering health care issues in Oregon and southwest Washington.
30 years as an emergency room nurse of which 25 were in Portland to Springfield, it’s real simple. The unfettered access to highly addictive drugs is driving the unsustainable medical cost incurred here and everywhere else throughout the country. They all are losing money.
It just makes no sense at all. Cuts have to be made to fix the financial problem, so why not make them locally instead of allowing an out-of-town entity to make them?