Can Jefferson County learn from HealthSouth’s comeback?
By Wade KwonCEO keynote explains parallels and possibilities
Jay Grinney told attendees of the Birmingham Economic Summit Thursday that HealthSouth’s comeback can show the way for Jefferson County to solve its debt and leadership crisis. The HealthSouth chief executive officer was the keynote speaker during lunch at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex.
Included above are slides from his presentation, which show how badly the rehab company screwed up, and how nothing short of replacing all top officers and changing the culture kept the company from shutting down.
Grinney pointed out that during his travels across the country, Jefferson County was known far and wide for its convicted officials and massive sewer debt: “More people are aware of Jefferson County’s problems than they were of HealthSouth’s problems.”
He cited the Birmingham Business Alliance’s plan in the works to stimulate economic development, and the need for a combined county-city government.
The two-day summit concludes today.
What do you think? Can the county learn from HealthSouth? Should it work on cooperative or combined government?
Sunday, November 22, 2009, 1:29 pm
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Wade Kwon, Brian Cauble. Brian Cauble said: RT @WadeOnTweets:#sundayread How HealthSouth’s comeback could save Jefferson County from complete implosion: http://bit.ly/7Tjxp4 […]
Monday, November 24, 2014, 5:53 pm
[…] However, in 1997 government cut Medicare reimbursements to hospitals, which took a huge toll on HealthSouth’s margins.5 With Medicare at the time accounting for 37% of HealthSouth’s revenues, HealthSouth’s business immediately felt the effects of the subsidy cuts.5 With HealthSouth no longer able to grow via acquisition, many of its flaws in operations began to show. Scrushy tried to keep his company profitable off operations alone by upping the amount of patients at each of his facilities, but HealthSouth still took an 86% hit to net income in 1998.5 Yet HealthSouth “magically” found new life over the next few years. Although sales only grew by 5% from 1999 to 2001, HealthSouth’s net income inconceivably rose almost 500%.1 At the time, Scrushy explained this rebound occurred from lowering costs while raising revenues through increased efficiency in each hospital, but we now know that these magical earnings numbers were magical for a reason: because they were almost completely fictitious. (See Exhibit A for HealthSouth’s actual income as compared to their reported income) […]