Emanuel Medical Center Issues

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Emanuel Medical Center (EMC) is having an enormous amount of issues, financially. Even the CEO, Robert Moen, knows they are experiencing a number of challenges and it cannot be fixed overnight. One of the main challenges EMC are facing is the federal regulation change(s). They are playing a big role in the financial struggle with lower reimbursement rates for federal insurance programs, implementation of EMTALA laws, development of services offered by other local competing hospitals, changes in service area demographics, which have all contributed to five sequential negative operating margins for EMC.
EMTALA impacts Emanuel Medical Center because it will require mandatory treatment for emergency room visits by hospitals regardless of their ability to pay. EMC was established in 1917, which makes it an old, but bigger facility that can withstand a bigger capacity, sixteen thousand patients, of emergency visits per year. With the passing of this regulation, EMC emergency department treats forty-five thousand patients every year, and because the ED is small and greatly understaffed, it causes longer waiting periods for patients. The frustrations of patients who are sick or not feeling themselves and all have some sort of emergency, have to wait long periods constantly, results in a bad reputation for the medical center. This will affect services, and also a loss of market share due to potential customers traveling to a competing hospital or clinic to receive care.
Medicare and Medi-Cal insures about fifty percent of patients EMC treats in the ED and because of that large number of patients it exposes the hospital to low-reimbursement rates the hospital receives back from those programs for providing care. Federally funded programs r...

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...ived charity donations, and because of this EMC have survived with effective investment returns. In order for EMC to remain open, they will need to search for the best loan opportunities to generate more revenue, since they are in a good standing to be eligible for a loan. With competition quickly making leeway, Emanuel Medical Center cannot continue to survive with donations alone. EMC needs to generate more revenue to stop spending its profits on prior investments. The negative operating margins have basically left the hospital in a very bad financial situation, and it will not and cannot improve until different services are offered.
All in all, for EMC to survive in a competitive environment the administrative staff at the hospital will need to re-evaluate the services they want to offer and what population demographics it will serve to better their organization.

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