By Michael Ladevich
Interim CEO, Murray County Medical Center
July 2019
Earlier this week one of the leaders at MCMC forwarded a complaint from a former patient. This patient was highly displeased with the care she received from a particular provider sometime in 2017 and indicated that she was “never going to return to MCMC” because this provider was rude to her. While this reaction to poor service is understandable, it didn’t really make sense to me. I had never heard of this provider—it turns out that this provider was at MCMC for a brief time before finding employment elsewhere.
While this questionable provider soon left MCMC (and that was a positive outcome for both the provider and MCMC patients!) it points to our top priority. Recent surveys highlighted “Provider Turnover” as the number one problem that MCMC needs to fix in order to earn back trust from the leadership, citizens and patients of this community. Further evidence of this problem can be seen in the nearly 50% drop in our clinic volume. In 2018 MCMC saw about 6,900 annual visits compared to earlier in the decade where an annual high of 13,400 visits was the norm. Similarly, inpatient days dropped from a high of 1,200 days to about 650 in 2018.
The negative statistical trends in these two key areas are driving the negative financial results at MCMC. To reverse the financial trend over the last decade we need to first reverse our negative statistical trends in the clinic and hospital. When anyone of us looks for a new house, real estate brokers tell us that housing prices are driven by location, and we hear the mantra “location, location, location” from the brokers. At MCMC, the mantra “volume, volume, volume” is just as valid.
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