Plan to revive Carney unveiled

Hospital seeks up to $30m in funding

Ralph de la Torre, the new chief executive of Caritas Christi Health Care, last night unveiled a plan to keep Carney Hospital in Dorchester running as an acute-care hospital.

All he needs is $30 million.

Less than a month into the job running the six-hospital chain owned by the Archdiocese of Boston, de la Torre pitched a bold plan to invest in the run-down hospital, bring new doctors to Dorchester, and revitalize Laboure College, the nursing school that is part of the Carney campus on lower Dorchester Avenue.

De la Torre said he is seeking $20 million to $30 million from outside sources, including funds from the city, state, foundations, and individuals.

"Anybody who can help," said de la Torre. "This is bigger than Carney. This is about saving Laboure, saving Carney, keeping jobs in the community, and keeping education in the community."

De la Torre presented the plan to residents, healthcare professionals, and elected officials during a community meeting last night at a union hall on Adams Street. In recent weeks, local and state politicians working to preserve Carney had formalized their group as the Coalition to Strengthen Carney Hospital. Led by Boston City Council president Maureen Feeney, the coalition has been meeting quietly with Caritas Christi officials.

"We're really excited," said Feeney before the meeting, "but we're going to take it one step at a time. We know we have Caritas Christi standing with us, and they know they will not be standing alone. Our congressmen, our senators and representatives, and our mayor are all prepared to help provide healthcare at a community hospital."

Carney, founded in South Boston in 1863, is a community acute-care hospital, meaning it treats all but the most complex cases, which are usually sent to academic medical centers. The hospi tal is also a key provider of adult and adolescent psychiatric services.

The hospital has been in jeopardy since it lost $2.2 million in the year ending Sept. 30, 2007, despite a $4 million state grant and $6.7 million in subsidies from other hospitals in the chain. Also last year, separate efforts to sell the Caritas Christi system to two Catholic healthcare operators failed.

Meantime, Attorney General Martha Coakley commissioned a healthcare consultant to review Carney and the entire Caritas Christi system. In March, the consultant recommended that Carney be converted into a psychiatric hospital with a minimal services for local residents who need urgent care and primary treatment.

But Caritas Christi had enlisted its own consultant, long before it hired de la Torre, to study Carney's future. That report, initially due in early April, was released yesterday. It reached the opposite conclusion.

"Closing Carney or converting it to an institution for mental disease is not a viable financial or community option," Wellspring Partners consultants wrote in a report summary. Given the chain's commitment to the hospital, they wrote, "Revitalizing Carney as an acute-care hospital is the most likely solution."

State Senator Jack Hart, Democrat of Boston, who had been briefed on the report, said, "It's a good day for the Carney, and it's a good day for the people the Carney serves."

Still, the report spells out many financial challenges. Since it became part of the Caritas Christi chain in 1997, Carney has been starved for investment in equipment and updates to its aging structure. Among the issues, according to the report:

The hospital has lost market share "in a shrinking market served by a significant number of clinically sophisticated hospitals," while maintaining a large share of the older adult population.

It will continue to lose patients unless it gets "state-of-the-art facilities and equipment."

Local health centers are sending more patients to other hospitals, a situation that "is not reversible."

If Carney were to close, other hospitals could absorb medical and surgical patients now treated by Carney.

De la Torre said his plan is to invest in medical specialties that generate high-revenue procedures, such as cardiology, gastroenterology, and surgery. He wants to renovate operating rooms to current standards and add more advanced imaging equipment.

To attract doctors, he said, Caritas Christi will use a new payment system under which doctors will be paid the same amount for a given procedure regardless of which of the chain's hospitals provide the service. He said Caritas Christi is willing to subsidize physicians and add doctors to the physician group, and to absorb potential losses. But he is looking for outside funding to upgrade the hospital's facilities.

"It's not much more than the state is giving us to stay open right now," de la Torre said, referring to the annual subsidies provided by the Legislature.

State Representative Marty Walsh, Democrat of Dorchester, said the Legislature will work to find funding for the hospital, but money is unlikely this year.

"We tend not to want to do capital improvements to medical facilities," said Walsh, "but we can try get better reimbursement for Medicaid and force some of the private insurance companies to the negotiating table. If we can make a few adjustments here and there, we might be able to make things work."

The report underscores the need for additional funding to make de la Torre's plan work.

"The most immediate need is that of facility and technology improvement," wrote the consultants. "If this need for capital is not met, it will certainly lead to financial failure."

Jeffrey Krasner can be reached at krasner@globe.com.