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Bon Secours seeks DePaul restructuring

ERICK SORICELLI
Monday June 11, 2007

Bon Secours DePaul Medical Center in Norfolk has been standing, in some form or another, for 151 years.

Citing an aging facility and changing health needs, Bon Secours Hampton Roads Health System now wants to replace the 238-bed DePaul with a smaller, 30- to 60-bed hospital.

Under its plan, DePaul’s remaining licensed beds, approximately 130 to 180, would be shifted to two proposed hospitals at Suffolk’s Harbour View and Virginia Beach’s Princess Anne area.

Bon Secours will compete with Sentara Healthcare in Suffolk and Virginia Beach. Both systems submitted letters of intent to the state for separate proposals on the same day. If approved, Bon Secours and Sentara officials said their projects won’t be ready until 2010 at the earliest.

Both systems have until July 1 to submit detailed plans to the state, via a certificate of public need application.

DePaul is Virginia’s oldest Catholic hospital and it could be hard to imagine what a compact version would look like. Daniel Duggan, DePaul’s administrator and a Bon Secours executive vice president, offers an idea.

“What we’re doing is creating ‘health care town centers,’” he said. “Health care has evolved to be less invasive, with shorter stays.”

The proposal comes at a time when DePaul has consistently posted an operating loss. Over the past five fiscal years, DePaul has lost $2.26 million. Only once, in fiscal year 2005, did DePaul have an operating profit, of $3.55 million, according to Bon Secours.

Meanwhile, in 2005, DePaul spent $19 million in charity care for patients who couldn’t afford to pay.

“From a national perspective, you do see a trend toward smaller, more locally focused facilities,” Duggan said. “You can only do so many 300-400-bed hospitals in so many locales.”

Bon Secours needs state approval for its proposal. If approved, all three hospitals would be built out of, or close to, its existing facilities.

Bon Secours’ facilities at Harbour View and Princess Anne offer outpatient surgery services, among others. Harbour View opened an emergency department in May. A Harbour View hospital could have 50 to 80 beds; a Princess Anne hospital could have 80 to 100 beds.

If built, the three hospitals would be the smallest acute-care facilities on the Southside or Peninsula. Currently, Newport News’ Mary Immaculate Hospital, a Bon Secours facility, is the smallest with 110 beds.

Rick Gundling, vice president of product development with the Healthcare Financial Management Association, said he has yet to see any existing examples of Bon Secours’ plan.

But to keep a hospital afloat, he said, size doesn’t matter so much as incoming patient revenue.

“It all varies on the type of payer mix,” Gundling said.

Treating high numbers of Medicare, Medicaid and uninsured patients can tip a hospital’s finances toward the red.

“If they’re dealing with a 150-year-old hospital, it sounds like they want to have a more updated facility,” he said. “The way that nursing units are laid out in a hospital these days is much different from the way Florence Nightingale was doing it.”

In Virginia Beach, Bon Secours will go head-to-head with Sentara, which has a competing hospital proposal for its Princess Anne emergency complex.

In Suffolk, a full Harbour View hospital would be the first in the growing area. Sentara has an emergency facility, Sentara BelleHarbour, under construction on Bridge Road, close to Harbour View.

Although Bon Secours and Sentara have made their intentions known to the state at the same time, Duggan denied the timing had to do with the competition.

“I think in both of those areas, we had identified need in those communities long before Sentara got there,” he said.

Sentara also needs state approval for its proposals.

In Virginia Beach, Sentara wants to effectively switch services at Sentara Bayside Hospital and Sentara Princess Anne. Bayside’s 158 beds would be moved to Princess Anne to establish a full acute-care hospital at Princess Anne. The move would leave Bayside as an emergency facility, what Princess Anne is now.

In Suffolk, the system wants to add beds to Sentara Obici Hospital, on Godwin Boulevard. The 138-bed Obici and Harbour View are 20 minutes apart. Sentara has yet to specify the number of beds.

Sentara spokeswoman Kim Van Sickel said the system is waiting to see Bon Secours’ COPN application before it responds.

As a Catholic and religious hospital, DePaul has long-standing ties with some of the neighborhood churches.

Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church is behind the hospital. Its pastor, the Rev. Joseph Metzger III, celebrates Mass at DePaul’s chapel on Thursdays. Several parishioners serve on DePaul’s board and volunteer at the hospital.

The church hasn’t taken a position on the proposal, Metzger said. He hasn’t heard support or opposition from church parishioners, but he expects people to develop stances as time goes on.

But he said DePaul’s plans don’t change the hospital’s mission, nor does it move beds out of the region.

“If it helps the hospital, which helps the community in the future, hey, this is a good thing,” Metzger said.

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Bon Secours Hampton Roads Health System is a leading health care organization known for providing care for the whole person with grace and clinical distinction. Bon Secours brings together a network of hospitals, primary care practices, ambulatory care sites and continuing care facilities to provide quality health care services to the residents of Hampton Roads. Bon Secours, which employs more than 4,500, includes: Bon Secours DePaul Medical Center, Bon Secours Maryview Medical Center, Mary Immaculate Hospital, Bon Secours Health Center at Harbour View, Bon Secours Maryview Nursing Care Center and St. Francis Nursing Center.

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