Plan in works to bring Forum out of bankruptcy

A preliminary draft of the reorganization plan is expected to be ready in early August, president and CEO Walter “Buzz” Pishkur said.

By WILLIAM K. ALCORN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

HOWLAND — Forum Health has turned its full attention to developing a reorganization plan aimed at bringing the hospital system out of bankruptcy and back to profitability.

A preliminary draft of the plan is expected to be ready by the first week in August, Walter “Buzz”Pishkur, Forum president and chief executive officer, said during a press conference Wednesday.

The final draft, which must be submitted to the Northern District of Ohio U.S. Bankruptcy Court by Sept. 15, will be the result of negotiations with the hospital system’s lenders and creditors and other stakeholders, Pishkur said.

Ideally, all the stakeholders will have signed off on the final plan before it is taken to the court, he said.

Simply put, the reorganization document will reiterate Forum’s intention to keep the three hospitals that make up the system and delineate how it intends to make each independently financially profitable and how the system plans to grow, Pishkur said.

Northside Medical Center in Youngstown, Trumbull Memorial Hospital in Warren and Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital in Howland comprise Forum Health, which filed March 16 for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

The hospital system also has plans to establish satellite clinics in Newton Falls and Hubbard, and re-establish its presence in Boardman, where it once had Beeghly Medical Park.

A Boardman site is needed to generate the patients for Northside that were once supplied by Beeghly, Pishkur said. He said there is no intention of developing a fourth facility in Boardman and then selling Northside. “I see the Boardman site as an appendage of Northside,” he added.

Pishkur said concessionary contracts with all nine of it unions, plus concessions imposed on nonunion workers, and other cost-saving moves have positioned Forum to be financially successful.

He said progress at Northside, which has been losing money for several years, has been particularly significant. Through employee concessions and other cost-cutting and revenue-enhancing measures, $23 million of the target $30 million in cost cutting and revenue enhancing have been achieved.

“We have action items for the remaining $7 million,” but Pishkur said he does not anticipate more layoffs at Northside. But, he said, the work force could be reduced through attrition.

Besides the reorganization plan, Pishkur said the other immediate major projects are to transition the health system’s defined pension plan to the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., finding a new lender for the system and continuing to operate day to day.

Forum has retained a New York City investment banking firm, Houlihan, Lokey, Howard & Zukin, for $150,000 a month to find new financing, ideally by December, he said.

alcorn@vindy.com