Baptist makes pitch for purchasing OCH
Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation gave its presentation on its reasoning for bidding on OCH Regional Medical Center at a special meeting of the Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors on Thursday at the Greensboro Center.
President and CEO of Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation Jason Little said as a company it believes in health care being local. He said regardless of location, hospitals are the economic drivers in their counties.
“It's been Baptist's intention throughout our history to go in and partner with communities so that we can be everything that community wants to be,” Little said. “From an economic development standpoint and from a health care standpoint.”
Baptist has 22 hospital systems in three states, the largest multi-specialty physician group in the region, over 5,000 physicians, a network of surgery centers, cancer centers and is one of the largest health and hospice companies in Mississippi.
Little said Baptist produces $2.6 billion in economic benefit to the communities it serves and partners with every year. He said the community benefit number is $313 million annually in uncompensated care and charity care.
Little said Baptist has a number of residency programs for physicians and it works to replace its medical staff who are close to retirement. It also works on training the next generation of medical professionals.
“The life blood of any hospital is its partnership with its physicians and its medical staff,” Little said.
In the last five years, Little said Baptist has invested over $1 billion in special project infrastructure and a large component of investment goes to electronic medi-
cal records. He said with this product, an application can be downloaded onto a patient's smartphone and can acquire immunization records, lab results and everything done with a physician.
“We are very proud of where we are headed as a system in terms of investing for the future,” Little said.
Little provided a few examples of where Baptist came into a situation similar to Oktibbeha County, where the county was looking for a larger entity to partner with to help build the success of its hospital. In each example, Little said Baptist was able to almost quadruple numbers of beds, physicians
and employers.
Little presented some Mississippi statistics regarding Baptist. He said there are a total of 10 hospitals, 1,562 beds, 60,000 admissions, 7,000 employees, over $1.2 billion of revenue in Mississippi, in more than 50 counties and are in three of the four fastest growing counties in the state.
“We like to think that's not because we landed in the fastest growing counties, it's because we help make them the fastest growing counties,” Little said. “We really do take a lot of pride in the partnership that we have in the economic development in our community.”
One example Little presented was located in Oxford, Mississippi, where the hospital was looking for someone to partner with and it tapped Baptist to help increase its services.
He said it went from $23 million in revenue to in 2016 having $185 million in revenue and will have a ribbon cutting for a brand new building on Nov. 8.
“In terms of physicians added, they've tripled since Baptist got to town,” Little said.
Little said a fear some people have is Baptist is just looking to buy hospitals and hold them for its own benefit.
“Instead, our goal is to be an operating company and take best practices and spread them,” Little said. “When we put all of our resources together toward this mission that I've been describing in communities with whom we partner, it continues to yield fruit.”
Dr. Harry Holliday, a physician at OCH Regional Medical Center, said he was not surprised at the information presented after attending both presentations by Baptist and North Mississippi Health Services. He said each entity's pitch was polished, but are just proposals and not set contracts.
“I'd hate to see our local hospital that we've got so much invested in go for pennies on the dollar to someone at this time when we are on the path of growing and continuing to grow the medical community,” Holliday said.
Holliday said one thing left out of this entire process is OCH Regional Medical Center.
“OCH has never been given the opportunity to present their story on what they plan for the future,” Holliday said. “OCH should have been given the same opportunity.”
Resident Bob Husbands said the entire presentation was professional and enlightening.
Husbands said what caught his attention was Baptist's number of technologically-advanced hospitals equipped to care for its patients.
“They supply all around their whole network and they work together,” Husbands said. “I think it is a better health care system.”