Creditors target Northside

Creditors target Northside

Forum Health’s creditors have Northside Medical Center in their cross hairs, and they appear almost eager to pull the trigger.

It’s not surprising that New York financiers would be willing to kill a community asset that was 125 years in the making. What’s surprising is that there hasn’t been more support here in the Mahoning Valley for this embattled institution. We observed in this space in March that Forum CEO Walter “Buzz” Pishkur was reaching out to community leaders in an effort to build support for Forum’s restructuring. We said that broad support from outside Forum and a commitment to make things work from inside the organization would be necessary if Forum was to live up to a heritage of providing comprehensive health care in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.

Since that time, Forum has worked to preserve its base and attract new business. Its unions have made significant concessions. But there has been little evidence of outside support.

A deadline missed

Forum, faced with presenting a plan to the bankruptcy court that it knew creditors would reject, chose not to submit a plan and to attempt to negotiate an agreement with those creditors. That may have been a good strategy, a bad strategy or the only strategy Forum had available to it at the moment.

It appears that the creditors will only be satisfied when Forum agrees to abandon the Northside campus. To that end, they want an outside management team named to oversee Forum’s operations.

There is no question that some Forum directors and administrators have made mistakes in the past. But one thing that was learned along the way was that highly paid outside managers are better at shipping profits out of the Mahoning Valley than they are at saving Mahoning Valley assets.

If there is anything that anyone in Youngstown, Warren, Columbus or Washington can do now to save Forum from being dismantled, this could be the last chance for Pishkur and the board to speak up.

Perhaps Congress should be asking how it is that banks that were bailed out a year ago with billions in Troubled Asset Relief Program funds are now working to shut down a hospital in Youngstown. But Congress isn’t likely to ask if Forum doesn’t raise the question.