Boone Hospital expects decision in 6 months
The board that oversees Boone Hospital Center hopes to have a decision in six months on who will manage the hospital after its current lease with BJC HealthCare ends.
Boone Hospital Board of Trustees general counsel Tom Schneider said the trustees have been working on this next step for years and are within “field goal range” of making the decision.
The trustees announced Tuesday that they would end the lease with BJC after about 30 years of management by the St. Louis-based not-for-profit. The lease will end on Dec. 31, 2020. The trustees were under obligation to let BJC know if the lease would not be renewed by the end of this year.
The hospital has run into financial troubles recently, and reported a nearly $11 million operating loss in 2017.
Schneider said Boone Hospital was an outlier in the BJC system because it was more than 30 miles from the Mississippi River. He said BJC’s management style better fits hospitals in major metropolitan areas.
Former member of the Boone Hospital Board of Trustees and current Boone County Southern District Commissioner Fred Parry said the best option is for the county to run the hospital on its own. That is among the options trustees are considering, along with proposals from Kansas City-based St. Luke’s Health System and Tennessee-based Duke/LifePoint.
Trustees had been in exclusive negotiations with University of Missouri Health Care, but those talks fell apart in January.
Parry said Boone Hospital is the third-largest employer in the county and brings in millions of dollars to the county.
“I personally think there’s a lot of merit in a stand alone hospital option, I believe that Boone Hospital is a strong institution.”
“A stand alone model has the most financial risk.”
ABC 17 News asked Schneider about job security for the current Boone Hospital employees.
“I can tell you from the trustee’s point of view that holding the employees of Boone Hospital harmless is right at the very top of their goals and objectives,” he said.
Schneider said Boone will get input from the public before making a decision, but Parry said not to count on any public opinion or comment being a deciding factor because this is a large agreement.
“I don’t mean to discount the value of public opinion,” Parry said. “In this process but I mean there are some decisions that are tied to the changing landscape for healthcare in our country.”
