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Health partnerships come with a price
At one school, student athletes lost a trusted trainer after officials signed a deal with Premier.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Bellbrook junior Preston Rau went up for a pass during football practice last October and when he came down the tip of the ball jammed into his midsection, rupturing his spleen.
Unaware he was bleeding internally, Rau limped to the sidelines to see Woody Goffinet, a trusted trainer of Sugarcreek Local student athletes for more than a decade.
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"Preston said he had pain up to his shoulder, which Woody calls the "curse pain," meaning he was bleeding internally," explained Jim Rau, Preston's father.
The 17-year-old was rushed to the hospital and will make a full recovery. Rau credits the relationship between his son and Goffinet as key in discovering the possibly life-threatening injury. Goffinet, an employee of Kettering Health Network, is one of several long-time trainers to leave their posts after a school district inked a deal with Premier Health Partners.
Like 10 other area schools, Sugarcreek accepted $1.5 million over 15 years for new field turf and other improvements in exchange for advertising rights and an exclusive sports medicine contract. School and hospital officials point out every trainer was given an opportunity to stay. Some switched hospital affiliation, others moved on.
Losing Goffinet concerns some parents, Rau says, who feel their student athletes are losing the "trust" they once had with the person looking after them on the field.
"I can't say anything negative about the Premier trainers. But Woody, in my opinion, went far above what was expected. He really showed a sense of dedication," Rau said. "Sometimes you make a business decision without going further and looking at, I guess you could call it, the human aspect."
Kettering Health Network executives declined to be interviewed for this story. Goffinet, who remains a Kettering employee, also declined comment.
A partnership key
Each of the 11 agreements with area school districts, worth a total of $25 million over the next two decades, means Premier supplies trainers to 34 districts — assuring a Premier-affiliated trainer on the sidelines.
"We sat down and decided to make a focused effort on this type of service and make an investment," said Tom Arquilla, Premier vice president of business development.
These agreements, often much cheaper than Kettering, make Premier a dominant player in the area's sports medicine field.
Patients can visit any doctor they choose, but industry experts say Premier could reap the benefits of the sports contracts with trainers steering athletes and their families to Premier services.
"It is not unusual for hospitals to provide trainers and do it at low cost with the idea they will capture the treatment for it," said David Marlowe, president of the American Hospital Association's Society for Healthcare Strategy and Marketing Development, based in Chicago. "Clearly they will find a way to make the exclusivity valuable."
Community facilities
Two of the earliest partnerships, in Mason and Springboro, have blossomed into agreements to build multi-million dollar hospital satellites for the whole community.
The buildings, built on high school campuses, will house doctors, locker rooms and press boxes. The funding won't impact either organization's credit and does not require voter approval.
"We didn't want to impact our ability to borrow," explains David Baker, superintendent of the growing Springboro Community Schools.
Loans are drawn from the Columbus Port Authority under the watch of the Ohio Association of School Business Officials, which provides credit for districts to replace buses and other necessities.
Federal and state guidelines creating the tax incentives offered by ports authority require the boards make money available for school districts, said David Varda, executive director of the school business association. There are now $100 million worth of active loans from the agency to state school districts.
The Premier facilities construction loans taken on by the district will be repaid by leasing space in the new buildings to doctors and other medical staff.
"It's a way of anchoring the relationship with the school district," said Arquilla. "They have an interest in making sure we succeed and we have an interest in making sure they succeed."
Baker said the building now underway near the overhauled football stadium — Careflight Field — is an asset to the community. "We are hoping to get a large variety of services so the community has a one-stop-shop."
More to come
The $25 million efforts by Premier's to increase name recognition and visibility in communities is nothing unique, said Rick Wade, a spokesman for the American Hospital Association.
"When you look at what defines a community, it's the school, the churches, the hospital," Wade said. "It's those things that provide people stability."
What is ground-breaking is that Premier is investing in local schools hoping for life-long patients, he said.
"It is a unique approach in Dayton. Other hospitals have partnered with universities or community centers. You have to look at where in the community you have the biggest impact."
Premier wants to become an integral part of the communities where there have forged these partnerships, said Mark Feighery, Premier marketing director. "We are, in essence, moving some services outside the conventional hospital walls to the place that it is needed," he said.
And more school districts want the deal, but Premier isn't giving any details.
"We underestimated the demand," Arquilla said. "I think it is indicative of how broken the funding mechanism is for schools in Ohio."
School officials, hard-pressed to win voter approval to fix aging buildings let alone fix sports facilities, often praise Premier for the company's newest initiative.
This winter, Beavercreek signed a $1.5 million advertising and sports medicine deal with Premier that will provide a new synthetic turf and track after voters turned down a bond issue twice.
"I didn't feel taken advantage of," said Peg Arnold, board member. "I appreciate Premier was willing to work with us to further what our kids have and help them become healthier adults."
Contact the reporter at (937) 225-2342 or cmagan@DaytonDailyNews.com
