EDITORIAL: We hope Banner’s commitment to NCMC will continue despite uncertainty in health care, recent layoffs

March 30--In case you have your head buried in the sand, here's a breaking news story: Health care in America is changing.

Some may think it won't change much after the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives failed to vote on an alternative to the Affordable Care Act this past week.

But that likely is foolish thinking. Republicans in Congress and the White House are dropping hints they will try again soon to repeal and replace Obamacare. And even if that doesn't happen, nearly everybody on both sides of the aisle and many in the health care industry say the ACA needs to be fixed, and who knows what that will mean in the next year or two.

On top of that -- and you wouldn't need to have your head buried in the sand to be unaware of this -- state legislative wrangling over the hospital provider fee will impact hospitals around the state. That's an immensely complex debate, and there are lots of details, but the key thing to know is it will result in a $10 million hole in North Colorado Medical Center's budget this year. There's a chance a legislative compromise could fix the problem in future years, but nothing is certain.

Add it all up and you have a lot of uncertainty, especially with the biggest health care provider and largest health care employer in our community, NCMC.

Margo Karsten, CEO of Banner Health-Northern Colorado, oversees not only NCMC but also two other Banner hospitals in northern Colorado, one in Fort Collins and one in Loveland. She spoke recently with a Tribune reporter and acknowledged whispers of layoffs in the Greeley Banner system indeed are occurring , and to a large degree it's because of the political uncertainty facing most hospital systems across the country and in Colorado.

We have to admit the uncertain future makes us nervous, as well, about our Greeley hospital system. Karsten can't talk about layoffs yet because the impact here still is being evaluated.

She added her efforts will focus on protecting those on the front lines who provide care to patients. That sounds good to us, but rumors of layoffs of key people who have served the hospital well, and who have served the community well in a variety of volunteer roles, are concerning.

NCMC's numbers for bad debt and charity care since 2010, when the ACA became law, explain the reason for the anxiety at NCMC. With a high number of uninsured in Greeley, the ACA clearly has helped to put more people on insurance and has dramatically decreased bad debt and charity care locally. The figure reached a high of $112 million at NCMC in 2011, but it has dramatically declined since then, to a low of $31.7 million in 2015 and $35.6 million in 2016.

No one knows for sure what repeal and replace will mean, or what an ACA fix will mean. But if it translates into the number of uninsured being on the rise again, NCMC's bottom line undoubtedly will feel the impact.

We appreciate the investment Banner has made in Greeley in the past and the extensive system it has created in northeastern Colorado and western Nebraska. We have a first-class hospital in Greeley -- NCMC has been named among the Top 50 hospitals in the country for three straight years by an independent evaluator. We have many doctors, nurses and support staff who provide top-shelf care.

We hope that support and commitment to excellence at NCMC will continue in the future once the uncertainties are known. But with so few details being released so far about the staff impact and with so much up in the air at the state and national level, we have to admit we are nervous about the future.

-- The Tribune Editorial Board

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