Floyd wrote on Dec 8, 2007 12:04 AM:Did the auditors make any recommendations about the half-million salary paid to the head of Tri-City hospital?

Larry wrote on Dec 8, 2007 12:21 AM:District residents considering voting for another hospital bond don't like hearing that hospital workers and patients are complaining. They don't like reading about long wait times at the emergency room. District residents want to feel confident that the hospital is well run and provides good service.

??? wrote on Dec 8, 2007 6:52 AM:Profit??? Why does a company that is turning (or trying to turn) a profit, need tax money to fix its structures?

LAWSON............ wrote on Dec 8, 2007 8:11 AM:The administration at Tri-City has been reluctant over the years to balance the books by joining CMS (County Medical Services) even at the urging of Supervisor Bill Horn, who a couple of years ago raised the payment to hospitals and made it worthwhile to accept. Our neighbor to the east, Palomar Palmerado, accepts CMS funds. Tri-City needs to do everything it can to break-even, especially if they expect to pass a bond............

Puzzled wrote on Dec 8, 2007 8:54 AM:Why does the hospital hire so many highly paid consultants to do the exact same jobs as its highly compensated management team?

for profit? wrote on Dec 8, 2007 8:56 AM:how does a company that makes (or tries to make) a profit have the nerve to demand public funds on top of that? maybe the high executive salaries and profits could be used to do the retrofits the hospital needs. or maybe the next time Qualcomm needs a new elevator, the public taxes could pay for that too.

paul wrote on Dec 8, 2007 9:15 AM:Think i'll just go to Palomar Hospital thank you.

Save Their Bonuses! wrote on Dec 8, 2007 10:16 AM:So the hospital is back on track to make a modest profit by the end of the year? Does this mean that the upper management will be getting their huge bonuses again? I wouldn't be surprised since it's the typical MO for the hospital. Work the employees so hard they don't even get breaks, force them to go home early without pay, then use the money saved to fill the pockets of the management. BTW, if Suellyn Ellerbe doesn't think patient care is suffering, she's not taking a close enough look to see what is going on in some of the nursing departments.

Hilarious! wrote on Dec 8, 2007 10:50 AM:They want to do cost cutting? Cut Gonazales's outrageous salary! He has not increased the profitability or funcionality of the hospital. It's time for him to put his money where his mouth is!!!!!

LAWSON............ wrote on Dec 8, 2007 11:06 AM:Tri-City is a community hospital and belongs to the voters of the Tri-City district. Tri-City has an obligation to the voters to at least break-even. One suggestion that I have made many times to eliminate the deficit is to accept CMS (County Medical Services) funding from the county. Supervisor Horn has recommended this and even increased the amount they could receive. At this time when we have diminished revenues, I feel our trustees are not doing their due diligence by not accepting CMS funds from the county!................

britneywho wrote on Dec 8, 2007 11:19 AM:Get rid of the waste-of-time salespeople that bother employees. Pay the people that clean the bathrooms. That is the most thankless job I've ever seen at the hospital and very much needed.

Alex wrote on Dec 8, 2007 1:39 PM:For the district to pay $1 million to consultants to tell it how to allocate staff resources is telling us that these situations exist: the administration doesn't know what the workers are doing and doesn't understand the workload, and/or the administration doesn't want to take the political heat for cutting staff positions. Seems that the main job of the CEO and his assistants has been to hire consultants to do the job that that the CEO is supposed to do, himself.

Get rid wrote on Dec 8, 2007 4:00 PM:of those idiot "social workers" who ask you the exact same questions you were just asked when you were admitted. They come back while you are getting your blood drawn, or whatever, and start asking you the same questions-- without even bothering to look at you, you're not a human being to them--- one right after the other. I DON'T need a scoial worker when I have a medical emergency, I need a doctor. Want to compile information for your records, get a flippin office, and look through the information on the forms already sumitted when a patient is first processed. I actually told them, when they asked me the first question, "Why don't you go look up my information I just gave the attending nurse when I first checked in?" She said to me "Please don't get upset." (Like I was a child..... I wasn't upset, merely irritated, and I almost wanted to wisecrack back to her: "I'm not getting UPSET nurse, I just don't want anyone slipping me some saltpeter." BUT, she was under 25, probibly got her medical "training" for an "exciting career in the medical profession" in as little as six months at some papermill. Plus, she wouldn;t have gotten the faciciousness of the joke. Ah well, at least Gonazales salary is stillintact-- at least THAT works.

Baffled wrote on Dec 8, 2007 4:05 PM:Let me get this straight! The hospital chief who makes over $400K/yr. spends close to $700K for consultants in order to figure out how to run the hospital so it will make a profit. Seems to me that the "chief" should know how to run a hospital. That's why he rakes in the big bucks! There is something wrong with this picture. Trim the "fat" at the top and quit hiring consultants. Get rid of Gonzales and get someone in there who actually knows how to run a hospital!

More $$ for executive bonuses!! wrote on Dec 8, 2007 5:34 PM:If the hospital meets certain financial goals the hospital executives receive huge bonuses. To make sure they receive their bonuses they've paid a consulting firm $685,000 to make sure those financial goals are met. More work is added to the day of the non-executive, but they receive a very small bonus if the overall financial goals are met. I would like for any TCMC executive or board member to refute what I just wrote!! EXPLAIN YOUR BONUS SYSTEM TO US, THE TAXPAYERS!!

Alex wrote on Dec 9, 2007 1:25 AM:The bond... bye bye!

ER REG wrote on Dec 9, 2007 8:28 AM:If you really want the facts on patient care ask someone other than the nurses. Yes, they are run ragged but so are the other people who have patient contact in the ER. The patient's are really being discharged in record time to make the hospital look good. Sure, they move through the triage quickly but at what risk? Note the patient who was discharged before he should have been and rammed his car into other cars in the parking lot,or the patient who was still "out of it" and stood on the 78 getting hit and killed by 2 oncoming cars within minutes of release. Is this quality care? I think not. Guilty by association I am. Sign me.. Worried about patient care..

concerned wrote on Dec 9, 2007 8:43 AM:One need only to work at Tri City to see how the patient care is starting to suffer in the ER. In the quest to appease the patient wait times the quality of care is starting to become worrisome. When you next have a need to obtain emergency care and you are rushed through at record speed please take a moment to wonder why that is. Is your care the concern or the speed at which you are rushed in and out. It really started out to make the public happy but I'd rather be well and have it take some extra time than rushed through at record speed at a hefty sum and still worry about my health. Think about it. Sometimes things are worth waiting for..a few extra minutes in the ER is one of those things. Don't allow them to rush you through just to save them a few pennies. Believe me..your wallet and your health will suffer. You won't get a discount and you may be back for a visit sooner than you expect!

Doc wrote on Dec 9, 2007 9:47 AM:Tri-City has come up with a plan to streamline the ER and make more profits. Run patients through faster, release them quicker regardless of consequence, and treat them in the hallways without concern for their privacy rights, since there are no permanent partitions to provide it. Run them through so fast their information sometimes cannot be obtained before they are released, so the hospital has no chance to be paid, so Gonzo will lose his share of that fat dollar. Maybe Tri-City needs to hire supervision for all ER positions, who actually have hospital experience and have worked in the hospital environment for some years, so they actually have a handle on what real life in the ER is like? Or, maybe the new game is to eventually have an entire management staff without experience and hire consultants at big bucks to tell them what they did wrong after they did it? After all, you can't expect Art and Suellyn to make decisions on their paltry salaries, can you?

Admin cuts wrote on Dec 10, 2007 12:14 PM:No job cuts says Ellerbe and Gonzalez? Yeah, right! Due to their scrambling, my hours have been cut from 40 hours to 20 hours. When asking for 4 more extra hours to hang on to my benefits, I was declined! We have both Directors and managers as part of this whole mess!

Emesis Basin wrote on Dec 11, 2007 7:57 PM:Ask the administrative cash cow's why they are trimming the budget with consultant (Delta) recommendations. They are trying to save 7 million dollars so they say to finance the interior upgrades for the bond!!! That's right they invested 10 million on the Gonzales health club in carlsbad and another couple million to bring two new cardiac surgeons on board and they are going to place patients lives at stake to finance the interior of the upgrade. STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES!!! PENNYWISE POUND FOOLISH!! Help us OBI-WAN KANOBI your our only hope!!!!

PRUNING wrote on Dec 11, 2007 8:00 PM:We don't need cut backs on the people who actually provide a service to our community. We need ADMINISTRATIVE LIPOSUCTION ASAP!!! Get rid of Elmer Fud and his administrative team!!!!

TCMC RN wrote on Dec 11, 2007 8:07 PM:We have seven managers in my dept. alone and now they have added 3 more management positions called shift supervisors. They have hired back most of the 11 so called management cuts into these positions. What a joke!! According to Delta Farce, management and administration were eliminated from the so called time work study. No surprise!!! The study for which TCMC paid 700,000 dollars for is invalid and a farce. These kinds of studies were used in the 60's and 70's for manufacturing plants to justify work hours to management against the unions. You can't quantify nursing care. I am disgusted by the time that they want to take away from my patients. Nursing means you are devoted to your patient not the almighty dollar!!! My paitent comes first!!!!!!! You can't place a dollar amount on that- jerks.

Puzzled wrote on Dec 19, 2007 7:57 PM:If things are so bad there, how come it took me a half hour to find a parking place? If that place goes away, in a couple of years, all the high paids will go somewhere else and we that need a place to go for medical services will have to form a line at some other location. Figuring that a CEO's salary looses 40% to taxes, he is probably underpaid for all that he does, or puts up with. If someone thinks they can do the job better, step up to the plate, rather then yelling from the grandstand. Even Trebor makes more for a couple minutes on the mound.

commoncents wrote on Dec 20, 2007 5:30 PM:There is a patient care crisis and Tri City that management seems committed to turning into a catastrophe. They have made staffing cuts that would boggle the mind of any rational person and royally piss off any family of a past or current patient. The CEO is putting patients lives at risk and not asking the people who do the work what they think needs to change. When will they wake up?