What’s it mean that Las Cruces has written Memorial Medical Center (“MMC”) demanding compliance with MMC’s contractual obligations – mostly reporting more fully and providing “Expanded Care,” which includes medical care for indigents?
There’s no established breach; but this is official notice that the City has good reason to believe breaches have occurred. Theoretically, if MMC ignored this, the city and county could take steps to evict MMC and its ultimate owner, the private equity firm Apollo Global.
This is a great first step we should neither take too lightly not applaud too loudly.
Much will depend on the reaction of Apollo/MMC and on the City’s intestinal fortitude.
It’s a fair question whether the private-equity firm will make significant improvements. If we were starting a hospital we’d not seek Apollo to run it. But Apollo owns it. Apollo won’t just return it to us, because it’s one of the chain’s most profitable hospitals. (Litigation to evict Apollo would be costly and rancorous.) But Apollo, through MMC’s new CEO, will respond, and will deal with its landlords. How reasonably? Guess we’ll find out.
But there’s no improvement without the City standing up. Yoli Diaz and I can kvetch ‘til the cows come home.
We should thank Yoli – and Gretchen. Yoli took people with cancer to MMC and pushed for their admission. She criticized city, county, and hospital, and screamed ‘til she was blue in the face at meetings – and talked folks’ ears off outside meetings.
She’d have gotten nowhere without her accidental megaphone, Gretchen Morgenson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Gretchen was discussing her newest book [These Are the Plunderers] about Apollo and other private-equity groups plundering health care entities. Las Cruces ain’t a big media center, but it’s home to one of Gretchen’s closest friends, Charlotte Lipson, whom she likes visiting; and Gretchen had heard of MMC’s problems.
So Gretchen gets to visit with Yoli at length and this becomes a national story. State Attorney-General Raul Torrez jumps in to investigate. Thanks, Raul! Others of us urge the city and county to enforce their contractual rights. The City’s letter to MMC cites Morgenson’s report.
As I was thinking and Mayor Pro Tem Johana Bencomo said, we also needed two other pieces. A new city manager, Ikani Taumoepeau, and a City Attorney, Brad Douglas, who would stand up and agree that the City had rights here. Former City Manager Ifo Pili and former County Manager Fernando Macias sat on MMC’s board. Were they watchdogs who didn’t bark? Or were ignored? I never heard ‘em.
Now we wait. Global/MMC is legally obligated to provide full information and start to remedy the breach, if it is one. They owe the City (legally) and the community (ethically) a lot of information. Lease section 4.9 requires an annual report describing the hospital’s fulfillment of its legal obligations. The City has [finally] requested such a report by September 30, so I hope we see it in October. It’s important that the City stick to its guns and require MMC to perform – but be fair in giving MMC time to do so. I may have my doubts about Apollo Global; but those aren’t evidence.
As I left the City’s press conference, outside, a Juarez news outfit was interviewing Yoli in Spanish, under the bright New Mexico sun. A citizen who’s done what citizens should do: be a complete pain in the posterior until leaders listen.
– 30 –
[This column appeared Sunday, 8 September, 2024, in the Las Cruces Sun-News
and on the newspaper's website, and will presently be up on KRWG’s website, under Local Viewpoints. A shortened and sharpened radio commentary version will air during the week on KRWG (90.1 FM) and on KTAL-LP (101.5 FM, streaming at www.lccommunityradio.org/). For further information on the topic of this column, please go to my blog, https://soledadcanyon.blogspot.com/ .]
[I’m not a pure bystander in this one. I’ve been writing about problems at MMC and the public landlords’ obligation to use their contractual powers to improve healthcare here by insisting on contractual compliance. ]
[I also urge City and County to investigate what their options would be if Apollo said “Take back your hospital, you’re too much of an annoyance” or Apollo largely stiffed the City on improvements and full reporting and the City got a court to say “Sayonara!” to Apollo. Neither is likely. As mentioned, this is one of Apollo’s more profitable hospitals, and Apollo is unlikely to hand it back. Litigation is expensive, time-consuming, distracting, and often rancorous, and should be only a last resort.
But we should know what our best options would be. First of all, we’d not want suddenly to be in that situation and start then to figure things out. Secondly, the more informed you are about such things, the better negotiator you are. I’m not suggesting city or county do anything untoward contractually, but merely that they should inform themselves on the “What ifs,” just in case.]
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