With the latest deal to save Prince George’s County’s cash-starved hospitals in the works, state, county and union officials say the University of Maryland hospital system is at the top of their list of organizations they’d like to see taking over the county’s four hospitals.
Announced last week by County Executive Jack Johnson and Gov. Martin O’Malley, the deal would create a state- and county-appointed hospital authority that’s meant to pull the hospital’s future out from under the political whims of elected officials, and establish a stable environment for potential bidders, officials said.
“For all those who stayed away because of the previous uncertainty; this deal provides the certainty,” said Del. Doyle Neimann, D-Prince George’s, who introduced the legislation on which the deal would be built.
The system has attracted interest from organizations such as nonprofit Ascension Health, which Johnson recently told the county’s House delegation behind closed doors was close to reaching a more than $400 million deal to take over the hospitals. Johnson now says that deal fell through.
Ascension, along with Washington Providence Hospital, which it owns, will continue to monitor the situation closely however, said Michael Thompson, a Providence Hospital vice president. The long-term viability of the system is important to Providence; if the county’s hospitals closed their doors, Providence could become overwhelmed, Thompson said.
But companies like Ascension don’t provide the luster that comes with an academic institution, which the system may need to bring high-paying customers back into the hospitals’ fold, officials said. Insured patients have fled the county system to hospitals with better care, leaving Prince George’s with an increasing portion of customers who can’t pay their bills, and driving the system’s current operator, Dimensions Healthcare, further into the red.
“We would love it if the [Maryland] university system got involved,” John Erzen, Johnson’s spokesman, told The Examiner.
That would also make the hospital workers’ union happy, Ebs Burnough, the union’s political director, said. The university’s system’s public nature would keep the state involved in the hospital’s future, he said.
Even Dimensions, which has been under fire the last several years for mismanaging the hospitals, believes it could turn the system around if the university was involved, Dunlop Ecker, the company’s president, said. “An academic institution would bring the weight we need,” he said.
Calls to the university’s hospital system were not returned.
