From left, Anne Meisner of CTCA, Matt Reed lunch sponsor from Newnan CEO, Michael Robertson of Piedmont Newnan Hospital, Ilona Wozniak of HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital, and Chamber President and CEO Candace Boothby.

Three CEOs from local hospitals were our speakers for the October 5 "State of Healthcare" Lunch at the Newnan Country Club. Sponsored by Newnan CEO, this lunch followed our earlier lunch series programs focusing on local government and education.

Anne Meisner, President and CEO of Cancer Treatment Centers of America at Southeastern Regional Medical Center,said Coweta is "an amazing place to do business in" and that she doesn't believe it's an accident that Georgia was recently ranked the number one state for business. 

"Certainly health care is a big component of that," she said, calling it "one of the pillars of economic development." She also pointed to the growing diversity of health care options locally, noting that in addition to CTCA, Piedmont Newnan Hospital and HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital, soon there will be a new behavioral hospital, and other health care providers include the Samaritan Clinic, specialty services and urgent care facilities, all of which contribute to what she called "the ecosystem of health care in Newnan."

CTCA opened its Newnan facility in 2012. "We've had incredible growth," Meisner said, noting that CTCA in Newnan has served more than 9,000 new patients from all 50 states since opening. "More importantly, those folks are being helped," she said. Traditionally the hospital has recognized its five-year survivors, and she noted that the local hospital is looking forward to celebrating its inaugural year of five-year survivors in 2017. "It'll be wonderful to welcome those folks back," she said.

Since opening, CTCA in Newnan has doubled its physical footprint, and Meisner joked that the large crane quickly became a recognizable feature there. "We expect to continue to grow," she said.

She referred to the growing need for their services, and she pointed out that one in two men and one in three women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. "It's staggering," she said. "That's the problem that we're trying to solve."

Having the right people is key to helping address the problem, she said, noting that CTCA has over 200 physicians in multispecialties from some of the finest medical organizations and academic organizations in the country, including Johns Hopkins, MD Anderson, Cleveland Clinic and the National Institutes of Health. "Right here in Newnan, Georgia, we're practicing that level of medicine," she said.

Meisner also said CTCA has recently achieved several accreditations and third-party validations. This year they were designated a Cancer Program with Commendation from the Commission on Cancer, "the gold standard for cancer programs." They were certified as a breast cancer program by the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers, and they are a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncologists and certified through their Quality Oncology Practice Initiative, or COPI.

She also spoke on the importance of cancer prevention, encouraging everyone to eat well, exercise, and get medical screenings.

Ilona Wozniak, CEO of HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital of Newnan, said she also believes that "this is a great community to be in for health care," noting that HealthSouth gets patients from both CTCA and Piedmont Newnan as well as all the other Piedmont hospitals and even as far north as Grady and Kennestone. "We really enjoy being a part of this community."

She noted that HealthSouth opened in 2014 with 50 beds. The hospital served 742 patients in 2015 and through September of 2016 had already served 719 patients. She said that in 2016, about 58 percent of the patients have had neurological problems, such as a stroke, and 16 percent have had an orthopedic injury such as a major hip fracture.

Rehab hospitals are highly regulated, Wozniak said, so patients have to meet certain criteria in order to be admitted. "Our patients have to have a medical need to be at the hospital as well as a functional need," she said. Patients must receive three hours of therapy a day, although that therapy is not required to occur back to back and can include things like learning to fold laundry as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy.
The goal of HealthSouth is to see its patients resume as normal a life as possible. "This is our number one goal: we want patients to go home," she said.

Wozniak said that 77 percent of their patients are over age 60, and 15 percent are over 85. Coweta residents account for some 29 percent of their patients, Fayette accounts for 17 percent, and Clayton and Fulton are the next two largest counties from which they draw.

"A lot of times, patients don't have a lot of options when it comes to coming to a rehab hospital within the metro Atlanta area, so we end up getting a lot of those patients," she said.

Wozniak also spoke about the hospital's focus on the stroke patient. A recent study found that stroke patients need extensive therapy when they first have their stroke, and those who get such therapy do much better. HealthSouth is making an effort to get more stroke patients, and she noted that HealthSouth is going for their stroke certification. They are now collaborating with Piedmont Newnan Hospital, which was stroke certified last year, on the care of stroke patients. Plans are to have a single stroke support group for the community that will serve patients from both hospitals.

Michael Robertson, CEO of Piedmont Newnan Hospital, acknowledged his fellow hospital CEOs and said, "The common mission is taking care of patients."

Piedmont Newnan's goal, he said, is to be "the hospital of choice" in this community so that patients don't have to leave for care. The hospital has more than 1,000 employees and had 1,249 babies born last year. There were 57,650 emergency department visits, 6,071 surgeries, 65,413 outpatient encounters and 8,339 inpatient admissions.
When the new hospital opened in 2012, he said, two entire floors were dark. That was by design, he said, noting, "That hospital was obviously built for the future."

He spoke of the importance of having the best employees in a hospital, and he noted they've already been able to decrease the overall turnover of nurses. "That's key. We all need nurses," he said. "We need more. All of us need more."

He also addressed the "margins standpoint" of the hospital and said that last year, Piedmont Newnan went from a loss margin to a positive margin, and he said early reports indicate it will break even again this year.

Among the Piedmont Healthcare network of hospitals, Piedmont Newnan is ranked as having the highest quality and now routinely sits in first or second place. "We're extremely proud of that," Robertson said.

He also discussed the importance of Piedmont Newnan Hospital to the local community, noting that in the most recent fiscal year, Piedmont provided more than $18 million in "Community Benefit," including the cost of bad debt, things that could have been charged for, and financial assistance. Piedmont Newnan is a presenting sponsor for the Chamber's popular golf tournament each May, and Robertson joked, "That number is not part of that eighteen and a half million."

On a serious note, he said that not-for-profit hospitals must work hard to generate more revenue than expenses in order for the hospital to survive. "We actually lose money on Medicare inpatients," he said, noting that they do, however, make money on Medicare outpatients, so it's a bit of a balancing act. As an example, he said that the hospital would lose money serving a Medicare patient hospitalized with pneumonia but would make money on a Medicare patient who uses the hospital for outpatient services such as having blood drawn or getting a CT scan or X-rays.

As with the other hospital CEOs, Robertson noted that Piedmont Newnan continues to grow. Its NICU was completed in May of 2016 and is a Level III NICU.

Piedmont Newnan also won a 2016 Women's Choice Award and was named one of "America's Best Hospitals for Patient Safety." It's a certified partner of MD Anderson Cancer Network, launched a new Heart Failure Clinic, and has been certified as a Primary Stroke Center.