Saving Forum Health isn’t a one-man job

Saving Forum Health isn’t a one-man job

There’s a lot at stake in the bankruptcy reorganization of Forum Health, operator of Northside Medical Center, Trumbull Memorial Hospital, Hillside Hospital and other health facilities in the Mahoning Valley.

Forum’s roots can be traced more than 125 years to the original South Side Hospital, and during most of those years, the hospital system’s story was one of expansion and success.

Forum still points to its success in providing top-notch medical care, but for the last four years it has been contracting, not expanding, closing Tod’s Children’s Hospital and selling Beeghly Medical Park in Boardman and Forum’s home health division. For years, Forum managed to negotiate forbearance agreements with its bond holders, but last week, faced with insistent demands from the creditors that Forum close its Northside unit, Forum went to bankruptcy court seeking protection and time.

Needed: time and suport

Walter “Buzz” Pishkur, Forum president and chief executive officer, is looking for time from the court and support from employees, local officials and leaders and the community at large to turn around the Forum ship in a relatively short period.

Pishkur’s background is in business, specifically the water business, but he’s gotten a crash course in the intricacies of running a hospital system. He joined the Forum Board of Trustees in 2005, when Forum was already in crisis mode, and was named CEO last fall.

Today, Pishkur is reaching out to community leaders in an effort to build support for Forum’s restructuring. Broad support from outside Forum and a commitment to make things work from inside the organization will be necessary if Forum is to live up to a heritage of providing comprehensive health care in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.

Forum has been forced to make some unfortunate choices in recent years. Pishkur points especially to the sale of Beeghly Medical Park, which gave Forum a presence in Boardman and southern Mahoning County and northern Columbiana. Forum’s predecessor, Western Reserve Care System, opened Beeghly, which provided a vital patient stream for Northside Medical Center.

If that was a brilliant move, its antithesis was Forum’s ill-timed decision to embark on a $90 million expansion at the North campus six years later.

Foundations at risk

The resulting indebtedness contributed to Forum’s problems today and, not insignificantly, lead to Forum’s use of two community assets, the Western Reserve Health Foundation and the Trumbull Memorial Health Foundation, as collateral.

Public institutions such as hospitals and universities cannot function today without financial support from their charitable foundations. About $9 million to $10 million from each foundation is at jeopardy of being claimed by Forum’s creditors if Forum cannot emerge from bankruptcy with less debt and with new financing that does not encumber the foundation money.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, the decisions of earlier boards and previous administrators to take on Forum’s unmanageable debt and to use foundation assets as collateral must be condemned.

Today, the only hope for preserving those assets, for preserving Forum as one of the Valley’s major employers and as a provider of quality health care in Mahoning and Trumbull counties and beyond, is a successful restructuring.

In our first sentence, we noted that there is a lot at stake, and success is going to depend on all the stakeholders doing their part.