Forum board is making tough decisions for the sake of the community

(EDITOR'S NOTE: The Vindicator does not normally run letters to the editor from individuals more than once a month. However, this letter is of such high interest to the community, that we are breaking that rule. If there are responses to this letter, they will be run next Sunday.)
I write on behalf of the Forum Health Board of Trustees. Together, we have accepted an enormous responsibility in our work for our hospitals and the communities the serve.
Few of us expected our work would be easy; at the same time, we clearly didn't anticipate the hard choices and challenges this duty has brought.
As trustees, we have a fiduciary obligation to Forum and its mission in the community. We have deep roots here. Most of us have made our careers and raised families here. This is home. And we all know that our community has suffered through many difficult times.
We took on this service because we care about our neighborhood hospitals and the quality of medical care they provide. But hospitals, no matter how important their mission, simply aren't immune to financial hardship or economic realities.
Forum has almost 180 million in outstanding debt and another 70 million in unfunded pension obligations. Alone, the Western Reserve Care System lost more than 25 million last year and, at current rates, is projected to lose another 50 million over the course of the next two years.
This financial crisis is real. Forum's books have been subject to extraordinary scrutiny throughout our turnaround initiatives. Our lenders have conducted independent reviews as both Standard & amp; Poor's and Moody's Investor Services have downgraded Forum's bond rating several times over the course of the past year.
We've been ambitious in our efforts to fix Forum's balance sheet. We invested in the services of one of the top hospital turnaround firms in the nation and through that effort raised revenues and cut costs to save tens of million of dollars.
But a clear-eyed examination of Forum's future confirms what Moody's concluded earlier this month. In a rations report issued Feb. 15, the agency said that Forum's "operating improvement date is only enough to sustain the system in the short-term and will not allow Forum to make the needed operating and capital investments or absorb the impact of a new competitive hospital opening in late 2007."
We must accept the realities we face, many of which are beyond our control.
There is no leadership in failing to take on your problems simply because the solution is painful. For this board to do nothing about Forum's losses and grim diagnosis for recovery would be to fail in our fiduciary duty and in our responsibility to this community.
Ultimately, we have few choices. We could allow the losses to mount, risking inevitable default, eventual bankruptcy and the near-certain closure of Northside Medical Center. Or we could do what we did: take decisive action to raise the money we need through sales or joint ventures so that we have a way to pay off our lenders and provide Forum's hospitals a chance for a fresh start, with the debt that is choking this system and starving it of needed capital.
This new phase is about finding opportunity.
By putting Forum's facilities and service on the market, we are opening the door to potential investors or partners who could bring new resources to this community.
We believe that the management, physicians, employees and unions of Forum's facilities can use this opportunity to explore a new model for health care. We need to think creatively about serving urban populations when many health systems are moving services away from the cities to wealthier suburbs., as is the case with our neighbors at Humility of Mary.
We see this kind of collaboration in action at Trumbull Memorial Hospital, where an engaged union leadership is working with the hospital to improve the hospital's financial foundation and build a best-in-class patient care model that will position the hospital to survive either independently or as part of another system.
Our situation is difficult and the road to recovery will be as well. This community also has a choice. We can allow this situation to divide us and risk the kind of acrimony and bad outcomes that have hurt us in the past, or we can choose different path that will produce something positive and help promote the Mahoning Valley as a community that looks forward rather than back..
TOM HOLLERN
Canfield
The writer is chairmaon of the Forum Health Board of Trustees.