Rory Reid, in another desperate attempt to jump start a failing governor's campaign has now made a proposal to make the University Medical Center into a teaching hospital.
Despite UMC's name, it really is a Clark County run public hospital that bleeds money because of poor customer service, $10's of millions spent on the uninsured, mainly illegal aliens(Thanks Daddy Harry for the help on the illegal alien problem), poor management and various other reasons. If the hospital is in the red, the taxpayers of Clark County are forced fill the gap. It has cut services within the past few years to close the budget gap but it still continues to bleed money.
So, Rory Reid, has now decided that it is time for the hospital to become a teaching hospital. (Apparently, he thinks he is the only one who has the power to make the decision) The other option for Reid was to have a non-profit hospital take over UMC, but apparently he couldn't find someone to take it over. And Reid, a knuckle dragging liberal, decided that selling the hospital to a for-profit hospital chain is beneath him. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/jan/13/rory-reid-announce-plan-make-umc-teaching-hospital/
So, a teaching hospital it is, according to little boy Rory. He wants partner up with a private entity- who, we don't know and partner up with a university, who we don't know to come up with a top notch teaching hospital.
The Univsersity of Reno has a small medical school and partly operates at UMC as a satillite teaching school, but it is hardly top notched.
To become a true teaching hospital that is about average, it requires a tremendous amount of money to set up and run. Most teaching hospitals still bleed money. It requires a faculty- where are they going to get them? It requires a tremendous of work on the infrastructure- where is that money going to come from. UMC will have to expand to make room for research facilities, additional classrooms, an up to date medical facility, which UMC is not, a supportive work crew, which UMC does not have and the list can go on. Where is all the money going to come from? Where are the people going to come from? Hell, the hospital at Nellis AFB is more of a teaching hospital than UMC.
This is just an election year ploy from Reid, who is running for governor of Nevada. This won't help him, even though Rory Reid's spokesmen, the Las Vegas Sun is helping him tout the plan.
If you want to get rid of UMC, sell the hospital to either a for profit or non profit and be done with it. Clark county can no longer afford the hospital, so Rory, don't be such a knuckle dragging liberal. You and the other commissioners need to get rid of the hospital.
I have been working on health information systems in developing countries for some time and it is interesting that a lot of your principles are the same as what I have been proposing to resource poor countries. The ideas of keeping things simple, incremental development, local use of data, minimal data set, appropriate technology and of course data standards and interoperability.
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