Caritas Carney Hospital in Dorchester has hired a consulting team led by hospital turnaround expert Dawn M. Gideon to analyze the institution's business and devise ways for it to improve its financial performance.
Carney said it hired Wellspring Partners, a unit of Huron Consulting Group Inc. of New York, to perform the review. Gideon is well known locally for her efforts in 2002 and 2003 to save Waltham Hospital.
"They will conduct a review of the market, our current position, our strengths and opportunities," said Margaret Carr, a spokeswoman for Carney. "They started at the end of November. They are talking to our physicians, external constituents within the community, and others. Right now they're at the discovery phase and they're doing a lot of listening."
In recent years, Carney Hospital has struggled financially, in part because so many of its patients rely on Medicare and Medicaid for their insurance. Those government programs typically pay less for hospital services than private insurance plans.
In fiscal 2007, which ended Sept. 30, the community teaching hospital lost about $2 million, despite receiving $4 million from a state fund for troubled hospitals and a $6.7 million cash infusion from other hospitals in the Caritas Christi system, which is owned by the Archdiocese of Boston.
The hospital started its new fiscal year with significantly more admissions and outpatient visits than it had expected in October and November. But the hospital's 2008 budget projects the facility will break even after receiving $4 million from the state fund and $2.6 million from settlement of a payment dispute.
Still, concerns remain about Carney's long-term viability. Attorney General Martha Coakley has been monitoring Carney's performance, but has not intervened directly in the hospital's operations. Separately, local politicians have sought a plan that would guarantee Carney's survival as an acute care hospital - one that treats all but the most serious cases.
Gideon, 48, has a long career in hospital management. She joined Waltham Hospital in January 2002 to close it down for its parent, CareGroup Healthcare System. But within months, the community hospital cut its ties with the CareGroup network, appointed Gideon chief executive, and sought to survive independently. It sold its land to a developer to raise cash and then worked to improve its finances.
However, patient volume never reached the break-even level. It continued to lose money, and doctors started to leave the hospital, taking patients with them, exacerbating the cash shortfall. Ultimately, a bailout plan from the City of Waltham failed to materialize, and the hospital closed in July 2003.
Despite the hospital's demise, Gideon earned high marks from the institution's chairman. "She did a wonderful job," trustee chairman Anthony Mangini told The Boston Globe at the time. "We didn't make it, but it wasn't her fault."
Gideon previously consulted to Caritas Christi, according to her profile on the Huron Consulting website. She did not respond to phone calls to her office seeking comment. Thomas A. DeMinico, a Huron managing director, is assisting in the Carney review.
Huron Consulting is a large, publicly traded consulting firm with offices in 13 cities that helps firms with problems involving management, accounting, healthcare, restructuring, governance, and other areas. It has expanded its healthcare practice in recent years. In 2005, it purchased healthcare consultants Speltz & Weis LLC for $17 million. Gideon joined Huron from Speltz & Weis. In January, it purchased Wellspring Partners Ltd., consultants to hospitals and health systems, for $65 million.
The report on Carney Hospital is expected by early April, Carr said.
Separately, Carney hired two physicians, Carr said. Dr. Mohammed Saad, a diabetes specialist, is joining Carney from Stony Brook School of Medicine in New York. Dr. David P. John of Connecticut is joining to head Carney's emergency department. He has worked in hospital emergency departments for 15 years and is immediate past president of the Connecticut College of Emergency Physicians.
Jeffrey Krasner can be reached at krasner@globe.com.
