Perks of the CEO
Here is a new article from the Times related to some perks that are being offered to CEO’s on a more regular basis. [Hospital Chiefs Get Paid for Advice on Selling - New York Times]
This certainly raises some interesting questions as to where to draw the line. Certainly there have been plenty of abuses in the past related to physicians and pharmaceutical companies, but the government has curtailed this practice to almost nothing in primary care.
I am not sure how many trips our CEO takes on someone else’s dime, but it does cause questions to be raised about his close ties with the Volunteer Hospital Association (VHA).
Floyd has been a VHA hospital during this CEO’s tenure and Floyd has been part of the VHA buying group. This has required Floyd to purchase the huge majority of all supplies, equipment and services, etc. through the VHA. It has also caused some local vendors to lose out on the opportunity to provide their supplies or services to Floyd even if they were less expensive.
Most of the other surrounding hospitals use a different organization for their group purchasing. There must be a reason they are using other vendors.
The Board had addressed this issue in the past and asked to consider other vendors for group purchasing arrangements, but the idea was blown out of the water and got dropped like a brick.
During my tenure on the Board, this CEO for some reason did not want to even consider having other vendors compete for the large purchases of the hospital.
With the current financial problems, this would be a good time to have 1or 2 other purchasing companies give a presentation to the Board and allow them the opportunity to compete. We could then see if there are some significant cost savings that could be had by changing companies. Sticking with the same organization is not always the best choice and part of the Boards fiduciary responsibility is to readdress this issue.
But then I keep forgetting that competition is something this CEO likes.
This certainly raises some interesting questions as to where to draw the line. Certainly there have been plenty of abuses in the past related to physicians and pharmaceutical companies, but the government has curtailed this practice to almost nothing in primary care.
I am not sure how many trips our CEO takes on someone else’s dime, but it does cause questions to be raised about his close ties with the Volunteer Hospital Association (VHA).
Floyd has been a VHA hospital during this CEO’s tenure and Floyd has been part of the VHA buying group. This has required Floyd to purchase the huge majority of all supplies, equipment and services, etc. through the VHA. It has also caused some local vendors to lose out on the opportunity to provide their supplies or services to Floyd even if they were less expensive.
Most of the other surrounding hospitals use a different organization for their group purchasing. There must be a reason they are using other vendors.
The Board had addressed this issue in the past and asked to consider other vendors for group purchasing arrangements, but the idea was blown out of the water and got dropped like a brick.
During my tenure on the Board, this CEO for some reason did not want to even consider having other vendors compete for the large purchases of the hospital.
With the current financial problems, this would be a good time to have 1or 2 other purchasing companies give a presentation to the Board and allow them the opportunity to compete. We could then see if there are some significant cost savings that could be had by changing companies. Sticking with the same organization is not always the best choice and part of the Boards fiduciary responsibility is to readdress this issue.
But then I keep forgetting that competition is something this CEO likes.
posted by Anonymous at 6:18 AM
4 Comments:
Maybe the administrators should come clean about what perks they are getting?? Maybe none; maybe a lot. What do you vote for??
Anonymous said...
HB wrote:
"Certainly there have been plenty of abuses in the past related to physicians and pharmaceutical companies, but the government has curtailed this practice to almost nothing in primary care."
I don't know about "primary care" doctors but the news has never stopped about the close financial relationship between doctors conducting drug studies and the companies producing those drugs. Just yesterday there was a story about how medical journals are having trouble with journal authors who fail to reveal financial conflicts of interest. And lots of doctors get paid by drug companies for conducting seminars touting that company's drugs.
6:57 AM
Regarding your comment:
"I am not sure how many trips our CEO takes on someone else’s dime"
Why don't you wait until you are SURE before you try to infer that he might be doing something wrong?
And how is it that the CEO can get his way if the board doesn't agree? Could something be missing in your account of the purchasing agreement? Something like the reasons provided that obviously were sufficient justification for board members who don't start from your assumption that if Hanson is involved it must be bad.
I in no way am accusing him of taking kickbacks. I personally believe that he is sincere enough and ethically sound to not do this.
But I do believe it is time to consider forging a new relationship with another vendor if it were to save money and be more beneficial to the hospital.
These types of relationships are similar to the good-ol-boy network we see locally in our politics. They get established and no one ever wants to consider changing
There is nothing illegal about them, but it just doesn't move our County or our hospital forward.
These are issues for people to think about and ask questions about. We should inquire why we continue to do the things we are doing.
There should never be a problem with readressing contracts with vendors and possible comparing with other vendors.
This is a County owned hospital and the peopld making the decisions should be accountable for these types of things.
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