BRUNSWICK, Georgia: October 12, 2009—Southeast Georgia Health System
was recently recognized as a top-ranked Community Value Five-Star Hospital
by Cleverley + Associates (C+A). C+A, a leading health care financial
consulting firm specializing in operational benchmarking and performance
enhancement strategies, released the findings as part of its new publication:
State of the Hospital Industry—2009 Edition. The book outlines the
data used to calculate the Community Value Index®, a measure developed
by C+A that measures the value a hospital provides to its community. Additionally,
the book provides a list of the Top 100 and all Five-Star hospitals.
According to Health System Executive Vice President & Chief Financial
Officer Michael D. Scherneck, the Health System’s commitment to
the community, including efforts to maintain competitive charges and reinvesting
capital to meet the future needs of our area, led to the honor. “Our
selection for this recognition means that we provide quality services
at a good value to our community,” Scherneck says. “Despite
the state of the economy, we have achieved a strong financial performance
over the last several years, enabling the Health System to reinvest more
than $164 million into the Brunswick and Camden County communities over
the past five years. We’ve also made a concerted effort to control
charges and we did not increase charges this fiscal year, which began
May 1.”
State of the Hospital Industry, which is in its sixth year of publication,
was written by William O. Cleverley, PhD, a noted expert in health care
finance and reports selected measures of hospital performance and discusses
the critical factors that lie behind them. The publication focuses on
the U.S. acute-care hospital industry from 2005-2007.
“The topic of hospital value is increasingly being discussed. Issues
of pricing and community benefit have been well-publicized but little
has been offered to measure the broad scope of value,” says the
book’s co-author, James Cleverley. “In response, the Community
Value Index® was created to provide an assessment of a hospital’s
performance in four areas: financial strength and reinvestment cost of
care, pricing and quality.
Fundamentally, the CVI suggests that a hospital provides value to the community
when it is financially viable, is appropriately reinvesting back into
the facility, maintains a low cost structure, has reasonable charges,
and provides high quality care to patients.”
Scherneck agrees. “By remaining financially viable, we can continue
to offer the latest technologies and innovations in health care right
here in Southeast Georgia,” Scherneck says. “And by putting
our resources back into the community through such reinvestments as the
recent expansion and renovation of our Camden hospital in St. Marys, the
expansion of our Miriam & Hugh Nunnally Maternity Care Center in Brunswick,
and the recent opening of our next medical office complex on St. Simons,
we are committed to providing our community with the best health care
at the best possible cost.”