HAS 534 Case Study

Riviera Medical Center

Through the 1980’ and 1990’ Riviera Medical Center (RMC) become technological leader in the region. RMC had top of the line Cardiac, and Women and Children’s center. The whole workforce was highly trained. RMC was also at his top financial era.
At that moment they had only one competitor in their region-Northern Valley Medial Center (NVMC). NVMC new approach was focusing on building base model medical group practice as groundwork to expand referral base. NVMC reinvested money in their new strategy plan instead updating and developing new facilities. While RMC strategy plan was focused on independent physicians attracted by the high tech authority provided by RMC. At that time RMC signed contract with Riviera County to acquire and close the old County Hospital, which stopped the county from selling the hospital to different investor, and the same time boost RMC’s census. Significant number of old County Hospital was uninsured and underinsured population, which created risk of changing demographics. Administration had concluded that the profit of additional volume would prevail demographics change over the next years.
In this particular case, there is one major problem and all other problems seemed to have stemmed off this one. Unfortunately administration miscalculated profits and undervalued effects and pace of patient demographics changes.
First immediate outcome of the contract was increase in number of emergency room patients. Initially build for capacity 40,000 visits each year, new patient demographics population added extra 15,000 visits. At that point ED was overcrowded and insured patients become unhappy with new clientele, which consist mainly of uninsured patients, or patients covered by Medicaid program.
Second problem connected to the contract was dissatisfaction of medical staff. Mandy doctors