Budget threat to region

Editorial by Greenville Daily Reflector, June 20, 2015.

Vidant Medical Center President Brian Floyd offered an update this week on the evolving role of Vidant in a rapidly changing political and health care environment. His comments during the Chamber of Commerce’s monthly Power Luncheon underscored the hospital’s value to eastern North Carolina and the critical importance of seeing its unique mission continue.

Proposed changes in the state budget are a threat to that mission and to the regional economy.

Floyd said health care is “shifting from a system in which providers simply treat patients’ symptoms and bill for the visit to one in which providers at all levels interact to prevent illness and improve outcomes in morbidity and mortality rates.”

The transformation is necessary to rein in the runaway cost of health care, as well as the rising cost of health insurance due to changes set in motion by the Affordable Care Act. The importance of lowering health care costs by improving health is especially apparent in eastern North Carolina, where high rates of heart disease, obesity and diabetes correlate to a disproportionately large segment of the population living below the poverty line.

Floyd pointed out that health care professionals and political leaders here forged a partnership four decades ago between the hospital system and Brody School of Medicine to provide greater access to health care that includes preventative care, primary care and access to specialized care in a large hospital.

That model has been shaken in recent years by state legislative changes to limit government reimbursements for indigent care provided by both the hospital and the medical school. The budget proposal approved by the State Senate last week would restore Medicaid reimbursements to 100 percent from the current 70 percent.

Floyd told The Daily Reflector on Friday that while that change would return about $3.4 million in yearly reimbursements, Vidant faces nearly $40 million in other legislative cuts. The proposed cuts include elimination of sales tax and property tax exemptions for not-for-profit hospitals, clinics and other health care entities that operate as charitable organizations.

As Floyd told chamber members Tuesday, Vidant Medical Center is the state’s busiest hospital and ranks fourth in the nation for the number of patients it receives from other hospitals. The Greenville hospital is the hub of Vidant Health System’s eight hospitals and 80 physician practices serving 1.4 million people in 29 eastern North Carolina counties.

The cost of health care is out of control, and Vidant must do its part to help change the forces that have allowed that to happen. But the burden for change is weighted too heavily against Vidant and other providers in the Senate Budget proposal.

Health care reform must move forward, but reform that damages both the economy and access to care for one-third of the state is not progress.

http://www.reflector.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-budget-threat-region-2915727