Northside Medical Center’s reprieve shouldn’t be ignored

Northside Medical Center’s reprieve shouldn’t be ignored

In a pessimistic assessment of the future of Forum Health’s Northside Medical Center a few days ago, we said that the hospital system’s creditors appeared intent on forcing the closure of Northside.

Even as that editorial was being written, negotiations were going on that resulted in a reprieve. Note that what was won is a reprieve, not a commutation. And there is a world of difference between the words

The future of the Northside Medical Center can, at this point, only be inferred from some of what is known.

Walter “Buzz” Pishkur, who took over as Forum CEO less than a year ago, was predicting that his plan would make Northside profitable in three years. His resignation was forced by the creditors, who are demanding more accountability by Forum. Ironically, those creditors include some of the nation’s biggest banks, which survived only by the grace of federal bailout money. The statement by a Forum spokesman that no one could say what the hospital system will look like in six months could be taken as an indication that the creditors are not inclined toward giving Northside the three years Pishkur said it would need.

Pishkur received praise from an official of the nurses union at Northside for the work he did to save that part of forum. By contrast, a nurses union official at Trumbull Memorial Hospital said Pishkur shouldn’t have gotten the job as CEO and shouldn’t be kept as a consultant while a new CEO is sought. Generally, some Trumbull Memorial interests have maintained that Northside is an unacceptable financial burden, not a potential asset, to Forum.

A man of commitment

We found Pishkur to be an accomplished businessman who had come to feel passionately about the value of the entire Forum Health organization to the Mahoning Valley while serving on the hospital’s board of directors. He showed himself to be smart, hard working and, up until the end, extraordinarily accessible. Those qualities, as well as his devotion to the region, will be missed.

Monday’s news of an agreement between the creditors and Forum was widely reported as giving Northside some breathing room.

But we will repeat what we have said in past editorials and alluded to Sunday: Northside Medical Center traces its roots 125 years to the old Youngstown Hospital Association. It is an asset that was built not just on money borrowed from New York financiers, but with the sweat equity of hundreds of thousands of Youngstown area residents over generations. It is the obligation of community leaders and elected representatives hear and in Columbus and Washington to protect that equity.

There is little doubt that this reprieve represents the last chance for voices to be raised in favor of working to save the Northside campus as a place where medical professionals provide needed services to the community. If community leaders do not become involved and entrust the fate of Northside to the next out-of-town hospital administrator, they should not be surprised when the reprieve expires and it’s too late to save an important community asset.