The Greenwood Leflore Hospital Board has approved a $698,000 two-year contract with a consulting firm that says it will change the hospital’s “culture.”
The vote to approve the contract with Healthcare Experience Foundation was 3-2.
The Pensacola, Florida-based firm provides patient satisfaction training for hospital staff and employees. This in return is expected to improve the hospital’s image and working environment.
Presenting a proposal at Tuesday’s board meeting were Al Stubblefield, executive coach and senior adviser; Katie M. Owens, president; and Leigh Ann Bradley, chief operating officer.
Owens said this type of consultation would create a culture in which a hospital would say “service is who we are going to be as an organization.”
The two-year contract will include a team of specialists who will review the hospital’s culture, communication and process to determine if they are aligned, she said. The team’s study should take two months, starting immediately.
An additional part of the services will be to aid in the search of a new chief operating officer.
Board member Brian Waldrop asked the Healthcare Experience Foundation team if the services would overlap or be similar to Vizient, the consulting firm the hospital hired at the end of last year.
Vizient’s main priority will be to find opportunities within the hospital for cost reduction and revenue enhancement. The group is expected to start work next week.
Stubblefield said that although Healthcare Experience Foundation has not worked with Vizient, the foundation has worked with other consulting firms at different hospitals.
Board member Larry Griggs asked if the firm had ever worked with hospitals in the South. The group had mentioned a hospital in the Bronx in New York City several times as one of its success stories.
Owens replied the firm has worked in the South and gave a recent example of working with a hospital in Louisiana but did not provide specifics.
Griggs and Waldrop wanted the opportunity to review the materials and reach out to other hospitals who had worked with the consulting group. Board member Sammy Foster said the contract needed to be approved that meeting. This was the first time the board had heard from Healthcare Experience.
“I look at it like this,” Foster said. “The hospital is losing money. We lost over a million dollars last month. ... I have confidence in this group. They have the track record.”
He and board members Emma Bell and Freddie White-Johnson voted to approve the contract with the consulting firm, and Griggs and Waldrop voted against the action.
Also during the meeting, the board received an update about the hospital’s holding unit. The unit closed in October because of risk related to the hospital’s accreditation with Centers for Medicare or Medicaid Services (CMS).
Updating the unit to meet CMS standards would cost $530,000 to $650,000, according to Stephen Ladd, a senior architect and health care planner with McCarty Architects in Tupelo.
Lois Kerr, an independent consultant, said renovations could cost up to $650,000 or more.
This does not include furnishing the unit, medical equipment and staffing.
Jim Jackson, Greenwood Leflore Hospital chief executive officer, said an exploratory committee of city and county officials, health-care experts, lawyers and others recommended getting a second architect’s opinion and a clarification of Joint Commission requirements for the holding unit.
The Joint Commission is the nonprofit organization that nationally certifies and accredits health-care organizations and programs.
Jackson said Mills & Mills Architects, which has offices in Greenville and New Albany, will be working on a second opinion. An architect from the firm came to the holding unit last week and has been given a copy of the first assessment.
“Hopefully we will have some progress on some of these things,” Jackson said.
The decision to close the holding unit was made after the Joint Commission changed its standards on ligature and suicide risks. These risks are based on anything that can be used to attach a rope, cord or other materials for the purpose of hanging or strangulation.
Griggs said he does not think the hospital was the right place for these patients and suggested a collaborative effort with other counties to come up with a solution. The holding unit took in patients from surrounding counties including Carroll, Washington, Sunflower and Holmes.
He suggested it might be more financially reasonable to build a new facility rather than pay the expenses to reopen the holding unit.
•Contact Lauren Randall at 581-7239 or lrandall@gwcommonwealth.com.
