Cook County Health Hires AArete Consulting to Help with Financial Strategy

Cook County Health (CCH) Board Meeting - February 28, 2020

Board Reports and Discussion:

• Public speaker- one person representing a vendor requested more timely payment.
  
• Staffing - 750 of the positions left vacant have been deleted from the budget. The board discussed the impact on care from staff cuts. Positions are only being cut through attrition, no lay offs planned.
  
• CountyCare membership is up. A partnership with the Chicago Public Schools has helped drive students to join CountyCare. The automatic assignment of patients to CountyCare will now be 50%.. There is a problem in payments to CountyCare and other vendors.
  
• The Audit and Compliance Committee shared results from the outside audit on coding. They found that there is improvement since the last audit but there is still a significant problem with coding and it is a whole house issue involving multiple people and departments.
  

The Finance Committee stated that there are multiple problems with income streams.

• ​CountyCare is waiting for payment of $350 million dollars. The claims are adjudicated but not paid. Uncompensated care is an increasing problem.
• Robert Sumter will be the interim CFO. 
  
• There were changes made to the organizational chart for the area.
• It is felt that there is a significant problem in cash flow, including a lack of clarity and communication with Cook County board.  Need to set up more meetings with the Cook County Commissioners.
• Better integration is needed between the accrual-based accounting of Cook County Health  and the modified cash based accounting used by the Cook County Board.
• Bob Clark, a CPA from AArete Consulting,  will be hired to help with financial strategy and bring in a clear set of eyes. He is highly experienced in health care entities.
• Contracts and procurement items were voted on.

West Side United presented an overview of their plans. Six hospitals on the west side have joined together to address social determinants of health. The life expectancy on the west side is 16 years shorter than in the Loop that is just a couple miles away. They hope to halve the difference by 2030. They just completed a 1000-day plan and will be starting the next 1000-day strategic plan. They are convening with the community on March 5, 2020.

Dr. Sharon Welbel, epidemiologist at Stroger and Dr. Kiran Joshi of CC department of public health presented a COVID-19 update.  Cook County has testing capabilities and does not need to use CDC kits. CCH has been actively preparing for an influx of cases and have implemented a rapid identification plan and set aside 2 ER rooms  for suspected COVID-19 cases that are not in proximity to other rooms. Over 1000 healthcare workers have already been trained.

Board President Hammock report:

• The CCH Board has been working closely with Cook County Board. 
• Otis Story has been appointed to the CCH board by President Preckwinkle to help educate the Cook County Commissioners on health issues.
• The search for a new CEO has started. A proposed position profile for the CEO was shared and discussed.  It will be sent to the CC board for use in hiring the CEO.

Items to Watch for in the Future:

• Many changes are anticipated to correct financial problems.

Observer- Lisa Slankard      Meeting Length: 2 hours 40 minutes then meeting went to closed session