A Times Editorial

Hospitals changing to serve us better

While some areas of the United States must offer incentives to attract doctors and while many hospitals around the country have closed or struggle mightily to stay afloat, here in North Pinellas County the good news about hospitals just keeps coming.

Last month administrators at Helen Ellis Memorial Hospital in Tarpon Springs announced that the facility might break even by the end of this year. It has been a long time since that hospital saw black at the end of the tunnel.

Helen Ellis Memorial struggled for years in the red and came dangerously close to failing before it affiliated almost two years ago with Tampa's University Community Hospital.

Since then, the facility's financial reports to the city indicate that Helen Ellis is climbing out of the basement. Only about $1-million was lost during the first half of this fiscal year, and that might translate into the hospital's first showing in the black by the end of the year. The facility lost $3-million last year and $7-million in 2000.

In addition, the hospital is serving more people, its revenues are up, and it is offering some new services, such as a sleep lab.

Tarpon Springs voters certainly did the right thing when they approved the takeover of Helen Ellis Memorial by University Community Hospital.

Clearwater's Morton Plant Hospital continues to grow like Topsy, and this month it was named one of the top 50 hospitals in the nation's major metropolitan areas in a list published in AARP's Modern Maturity magazine, where it will get lots of readership. Only one other Florida hospital, Baptist Hospital in Miami, made the list.

Mease Countryside Hospital in Safety Harbor, serving the booming northeast corner of Pinellas, is in the midst of a $71-million expansion to add an expanded labor and delivery unit, four new operating rooms and 61 more beds. That is just the latest phase of that hospital's growth. A 14-bed critical care unit and a medical arts building already have been completed.

It is clear that many residents of that area now treat Mease Countryside as their hospital of choice. The new construction was necessitated by a 100 percent increase in admissions to the hospital, as well as a big jump in emergency room patients.

All three of those hospitals, as well as the others that serve North Pinellas patients, recognize that they are in a competitive market. They are reaching out to the public and offering all kinds of new services and educational programming. For example, Helen Ellis Memorial has a bus that it sends to neighborhoods to deliver services. At Largo Medical Center, you can have coffee and a private tour of the hospital's facilities and services. Morton Plant has a newly refurbished Health Education Center inside Countryside Mall.

It looks like North Pinellas hospitals -- financially sound, keeping up with technological advances and managed by capable administrative teams -- will be well-positioned to meet the challenges of serving an aging population.

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