Doctors Hospital administrator leaves

John Moran, who worked for Doctors Hospital of Springfield when it was Springfield General Hospital and returned as administrator in 1999 after the Columbia Hospitals windfall, is no longer with the organization.

Attorney Paul Taylor, who represents the 10 owner doctors at Doctors Hospital, 2828 N. National, is now acting as the facility's interim administrator. Taylor began serving in that position at the 45-bed hospital in June. He said Moran "moved on to other things," but declined to comment further. Moran was not available for comment.

The hospital, which provides inpatient, outpatient, urgent care radiology, cardiopulmonary and physical therapy services, was in 1998 purchased for $2 million from Cox Health Systems, after Columbia Hospitals sold its local operations to Cox.

Taylor said the hospital's owners aren't yet actively seeking a permanent administrator, and he plans to continue in the interim role until sometime early next year.

In the meantime, things are moving ahead for Doctors Hospital, which opened in January after undergoing extensive renovations. Taylor traveled to Jefferson City Oct. 12 to address the Missouri Health Facilities Review Committee regarding a possible addition to services Doctors Hospital now offers.

"We are anticipating putting in a geriatric-psych unit, a unit that is an inpatient psych unit for the 65-plus population," Taylor said.

He said the unit would likely be a small one, with about eight beds that would be allocated from the hospital's 45 existing beds.

Taylor said Doctors Hospital already serves the community's older population to a great extent, and the new unit would add to its services.

"Right now, if you look at our patient floor and the population that we serve over there, 90 percent of those patients that we're currently admitting to the inpatient floor are geriatric patients, and that population has let us know that this is a service that we can provide that we should provide," Taylor said.

He added that representatives from area nursing homes have also approached Doctors Hospital about opening a geriatric-psychiatric unit.

He said the proposed unit would accommodate the full range of psychiatric diagnoses, but it would focus on those that can be helped with short-term treatment.

"Typically, patients are going to be brought to this facility for a period of two weeks, on average, and we're really looking for situations through medications and through therapy, to stabilize the patients so that they can return either to their own home, or if they're in a nursing home environment, then to return to the nursing home," he said.

He said minimal renovations would be required for the new unit.

Taylor said the hospital's owner doctors are pleased with increasing patient volumes during the hospital's first year in operation.

"Every month that we've been open, and we opened in January of this year, the overall patient volume has increased. If you look at all the departments of the hospital ... each month has been busier than the month before," Taylor said.

Doctors Hospital is now preparing for a visit from an accreditation survey team of the American Osteopathic Association, which will be in Springfield in early November.

Taylor said accreditation from an entity such as the AOA is necessary in order for Doctors Hospital to continue as a Medicare provider.

He said the hospital is also planning to add a magnetic resonance imager soon, but he couldn't yet offer any specifics as to when that would happen.