Health care reform urged

A medical center for Wesley Chapel remains in the planning stage, but the leader of the Adventist-owned hospital that intends to help build it said efforts to control ballooning health care costs are needed now.

As the national debate on health care reform rages, hospital administrators such as John R. Harding, president and chief executive officer at Florida Hospital Zephyrhills, find themselves grappling with both ends of a tug of war.

Harding said the responsibility of his hospital to provide quality health care to insured and indigent residents as well as to absorb costs associated with hospital operations, expensive prescription drugs and services, and offering competitive wages is taking a toll.

He also emphasized the effect the recession and lower consumer spending are having on medical costs.

"We have got to fix health care," Harding said at a gathering last week of New Tampa Chamber of Commerce members at the Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club. "We have got to get something through."

Harding told the audience of business leaders from New Tampa and Wesley Chapel that he was not passing moral judgment or making a political statement.

He encouraged the attendees, however, to place the health care crisis in a prospective that worked best for each of them.

"Don't let the politicians confuse you," Harding said. "Put it in your own context ... but as a hospital CEO, the current system is unsustainable."

Florida Hospital Zephyrhills is a 154-bed, nonprofit medical center that earns an average of about $120 million in net revenue annually, he said.

The hospital earned about a 5-percent profit last year, but most medical centers need to make at least 8 percent to maintain operations, he said.

Florida Hospital Zephyrhills is owned by Adventists Health System, based in Orlando. Adventist and University Community Health own a state license to build a joint-venture hospital in Wesley Chapel. UCH operates the large medical campus adjacent to the University of South Florida.

The Wesley Chapel Medical Center is planned for 51 acres on the east side of Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, about a mile north of State Road 56.

Harding did not discuss the Wesley Chapel medical facility during the breakfast meeting. In an interview after the event, he did not give much hope of construction beginning this year.

The project will remain on hold, Harding said, until conditions improve for a reasonable bond rate.

Plans call for selling bonds to finance hospital construction.

Harding said a hospital rendering and site plans were completed, but he was not ready to reveal them.