Bill of Health: New Numbers on Jackson Crisis to be Discussed

Governing board meets to look at latest info on meltdown

Concerns of financial mismanagement at Jackson Health System return to center stage today as the hospital's governing board will meet to hear the latest info on the crisis.

The treasurer of the public health trust, Marcos Lapciuc, will present the information to the 16 members of the trust

"Nobody expected this recession to be so deep and nobody expected this recession to be so long so therefore the amount of charity care that we're giving out has exponentially increased," Lapciuc said.

Jackson Health has three major facilities: the north campus, which used to be Parkway Regional, the south campus and the main facility in Miami. The system, as a whole, is losing about $14 million a month. And the approximate $520 million the system spends each year on charity medical care is a huge financial burden.

Lapciuc said Jackson had implemented a new system for making bill collecting more efficient, but its timing was less than perfect.

"Unfortunately we started it about five years too late but here we are and we're doing the best that we can and I believe we're starting to hit some pretty decent deficiencies on it," he said.

Meanwhile, the nurses' union is blaming the hospital administration, demanding a grand jury investigation into the crisis.

Lapciuc said it's time for all involved to come together to fix Jackson's problems.

"We need to work together within Jackson and we need to work together with all of the different stakeholders to try to make this system thrive and once again get back into a sustainable business model," he said.

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