The Tyrone Hospital board of directors and administration will hold a community meeting to provide an overview of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process. This meeting is a follow-up to the community\/corporate meeting held on January 4.
\nThe meeting will be held on Monday, January 22 at 7 p.m. in the LGI room at Tyrone Elementary School. Mr. James Walsh, Tyrone Hospital\u2019s bankruptcy attorney will be present. All members of the community are welcome to attend.
\nThis will be a follow-up to the January 4 meeting where a large crowd from the community arrived expecting answers as to why the hospital is in its current situation and what the hospital board and administration plan to do about it.
\nBoard President Judy Norris, Chief Executive Officer Walter Van Dyke, and Chief Financial Officer George Berger presented information and fielded questions from those who attended the meeting. However, no questions could be answered concerning the hospital\u2019s recent filing of chapter 11 bankruptcy because their bankruptcy attorney, Jim Walsh, was unable to attend due to a court appearance in Pittsburgh.
\nAccording to Berger, the hospital last made a profit during the 2000 fiscal year. At that point, it had a 1.6 million dollar surplus. He also noted the hospital initiated a program in 2004 to cut expenses and has cut expenses as much as they could without sacrificing the quality of the care and cutting services. Berger stressed the only way to improve the hospital\u2019s current situation at this point is to increase revenue. One way for that to happen is for more people to utilize the hospital\u2019s services. The hospital has seen a decline in inpatient and outpatient surgeries, the use of the emergency room, and overall admissions have declined 5 percent from 2005 to 2006.
\nIn his presentation, CEO Walter Van Dyke stated that Tyrone Hospital is not alone. The issues the hospital is faced with are very common for all small rural hospitals. He also stated that Tyrone Hospital is a 25 bed facility and that hospitals in the category of 0-99 beds are the toughest to make money.
\nOne solution that was mentioned extensively at the last meeting was the possible merger between Tyrone Hospital and another hospital. Van Dyke had talked with several hospital CEOs. Some were not interested and he felt some were too far away from Tyrone Hospital. Van Dyke felt that the two potential hospitals were Altoona Regional Health System and Geisinger.
\nHe and the board have been speaking with Altoona Regional Health System about a possible merger. The hospitals have hired a third party consultant to study if this option would be a good move for both Tyrone and Altoona Hospitals. He stressed several times that the board and administration are committed to keeping Tyrone Hospital an acute care hospital with an emergency room.
\nDuring the question and answer period, many concerns were addressed. One major concern for many in attendance was if a merger would cause the corporate membership to lose control of the hospital. When asked by a member of the corporate group if the hospital plans on dissolving or reducing the corporation membership with a merger, Norris responded, \u201cDo I want anything to come to harm this hospital? Absolutely not.\u201d
\nShe noted later in the meeting that the board does not want to lose control, but there may be no choice if it means the hospital doors remaining open or not. When a corporate member asked if a merger would mean additional department closures or reductions, Van Dyke insisted that would not occur.
\nNorris reminded those in attendance of the low percentages of Tyrone area residents who utilize the hospital. \u201cIf you want to keep this hospital, you\u2019ve got to use it,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Tyrone Hospital board of directors and administration will hold a community meeting to provide an overview of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process. This meeting is a follow-up to the community\/corporate meeting held on January 4. The meeting will be held on Monday, January 22 at 7 p.m. in the LGI room at Tyrone Elementary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39672\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}