Bartlett Regional Hospital is severing its longstanding ties with Quorum Health Resources.
The Tennessee-based company currently provides discounted supply purchases and management consulting to Juneau’s city-owned hospital. For more than two decades Quorum also employed Bartlett’s chief executive and chief financial officers.
The hospital board of directors decided last year to hire its own management team, and on Tuesday members voted unanimously to terminate Bartlett’s three-year consulting contract with Quorum, which took effect January 31st.
Board President Bob Storer was travelling Wednesday and unavailable to comment. But hospital CEO Chris Harff says administrators no longer need those consulting services.
“We haven’t really used them since I’ve been here,” said Harff, who joined Bartlett in mid-August. “And we kind of have what we need to move forward, and don’t need additional services and we can always go to the market and get those services if needed.”
Harff says that’s exactly what the hospital will do to get a new supply purchasing deal.
“We already have a boilerplate (request for proposals) ready to go out,” she says. “I don’t expect that to take very long at all.”
She says the contract with Quorum can be terminated with 60 day notice, and Bartlett can keep using its current purchasing agreement for three months after that.
Terms of the contract, approved by the hospital board and Juneau Assembly less than a year ago, call for Bartlett to pay Quorum $380,000 a year.
Officials with Quorum could not be reached for comment.
Bartlett is a city enterprise fund that runs on patient fees. The hospital board of directors is appointed by the Juneau Assembly
Casey Kelly is a reporter at KTOO in Juneau.
