Spokesman Keith Bowermaster said that the 382-bed hospital in Austell, “although financially stable, has experienced lower patient volumes and an increase in the number of uninsured patients over the past year.”
The health system has a “no-layoff policy,” Bowermaster said. “Through the Well-Star Employee Mandatory Transfer and Displacement Policy, eligible team members will be offered a position within the System. WellStar’s internal recruiters are currently working to place the eligible team members in other positions within 30 days,” Bowermaster said.
WellStar’s 2011 bottom line was $178 million.
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Counties can't afford to bail out hospitals anymore. Medicare reimbursements are down, and this 30-day readmission rule means that if a Medicare patient is readmitted for ANY CAUSE within 30 days, the hospital doesn't get paid. If a 75-year-old is hospitalized with pneumonia, gets discharged a week later, but then gets hit by a car and suffers massive head and chest trauma within 30 days of his discharge, then the hospital must eat the bill for the injuries sustained from the car accident. Great work Obama on reining in costs of Medicare!
Also, all you are doing is shifting the cost while potentially massively increasing demand. So all who have insurance now will still pay more by way of taxes and in the end they (the paying customer) will have longer waits and less access to care because of an influx of patients in the healthcare system since it will be "free". And if you think I a, exaggerating, just ask a hospital system what percentage of Emergency Room vista are deemed non-emergent and are Medicaid families.
More community services or immediate care centers would be a good way to deal with some of this issue and at a lower cost than insuring people to use an ER for a cold.
So again, it depends.