Jack Hughston Memorial Hospital
If Mark Baker, the CEO of Jack Hughston Memorial Hospital
in Phenix City, is overly anxious about the funding difficulties ahead, he’s hiding it well. “We’d like to think that our output and our quality is going to
see us through,” he says. “Te nice thing for us is, we’re focused. We don’t try to be everything for everyone.” Aſter all, the Jack Hughston name—the “father of sports medicine”—is the gold standard for orthopedic surgery and therapy. Over the past six months alone, patients came from 800 different zip codes to be diagnosed and treated. Even so, “we’re facing challenges, of course,” he says, sitting in a small conference room in a cluster of offices in a handsome stone building on Riverchase Drive, bought in 2008 aſter the failure in two years of Summit Hospital. (Hughston maintains a 24-hour emergency room and acute care capacity for the community.) Yet the economic squeeze is undeniable. As for most health care institutions, Medicare is Hughston’s major payer. “We’re getting
and more diligent, yet deliver a quality service.”
“We have to look at ways to be smarter -Mark Baker
reductions from the top, our demand is going up, and our reim- bursements are going down,” Baker acknowledges. “We have to look at ways to be smarter and more diligent, yet
deliver a quality service. So how do you position yourself for the future? In this time, it forces you to build better relationships with what used to be your competitors, to look at ways to consolidate. It’s smarter health care.” Within the next 45 days, Baker says, Hughston will be ready to
reveal plans for one way to build relationships and consolidate: a company that will work with, among others, Gwinnett Medical Center, which recently honored Dr. Champ Baker, chairman of the Hughston Foundation and former president of the Hughston Clinic from 1994 to 2000, with the 2013 Pioneer in Sports Medicine.“Hughston has grown to a point that, in a (health care) world that is shrinking, we can position ourselves to share what
we do well,” says Baker. Te new company’s work will be con- sulting, yes, he says, but “taking consulting to a totally different level ... “What we have to do,” says Baker, “what everyone in the health
care market has to do, is we’ve all got to go back to the table. Not just the hospitals, but the vendors, the pharmaceutical compa- nies, the linen suppliers—all those companies we do business with—we’ve got to be nimble. Te overall issue, our country’s overall issue, is we have to find a balance.” C
Jack Hughston Memorial Hospital CEO Mark Baker
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