|
Hummer has big
plans for South Fulton Medical Center
By LINDSAY
BIANCHI
Special to The Citizen
Christopher
Hummer, CEO of South Fulton Medical Center in East Point has his hands
full these days turning around a facility that was bankrupt a few years
ago. That was when Tenant, a company which owns and operates over 100
hospitals throughout the country bought the medical center and pumped
$30 million into it over the next three years.
When Hummer saw the opportunity to relocate in
the southern states, a region he and his wife once called home, it didn’t
take long to decide what to do. St. Alexis Hospital in St. Louis was soon
in need of a new Chief Operations Officer and South Fulton Medical Center,
had a new CEO on Sept.8.
In the six weeks that he’s been in charge,
Hummer says he has made it his mission to find out what the surrounding
communities’ health needs are and to meet those needs with the help
of a largely tenured medical staff who “care very deeply for the
institutuion.”
As the hospital continues to recruit physicians,
they are using outside objective data to document needs for certain specialties
and to discern how many physicians they ought to have versus how many
are in the area.
With a market share of only 14 percent, a lot
of people are still reluctant to go to SFMC or they just don’t know
about the hospital, he said. Plans to work with an outside marketing firm
who will conduct blind focus groups may shed some light as to why people
in East Point and the surrounding areas do not go to South Fulton. Hummer,
who holds a Masters degree in Health Administration says, “I see
us trying to be more things to more people and to be very good at what
we do. What I don’t see us doing is trying to be all things to all
people.”
Even with all the upgrades in services it still a job that is largely
undone, he said.
The hospital is licensed for 392 beds and operates about 150 to
230 of those bed throughout the year. With an average daily census of
160 patients, those numbers are expected to rise as the winter months
approach.
“We’re basically in a period where we need to upgrade services
that people want and will come here for and to offer new services that
we should be providing that we are not.” he added.
Having been involved in healthcare from both
a profit and a nonprofit position, Hummer sees little difference in the
two from a daily operations standpoint.
“I conduct myself no differently now than I did when I worked for
a nonprofit hospital. We don’t treat anybody any differently when
they come to this facility whether they have the ability to pay or not.
That’s healthcare.” He went on to say that SFMC writes off $35
million per year in charges for the community, but emphasized that all
hospitals have to do that to some degree.
Regardless of this daunting figure, Hummer says, “there is a lot
of ownership and a great deal of pride and enthusiasm for what we do each
and every day. I understand the situation to be one of great potential
and a lot of good has happened, but so much more needs to be done. And
nobody, not our employees, not our medical staff and not our community
believe that we are there yet.”
|
