Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 12, 1995 TAG: 9502130014
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A recommendation that operation of student health services be turned over to Collegiate Health Care of Norwalk, Conn., will go the school's board for a vote Feb. 24, Paul Harris said last week. Harris is vice president for student affairs.
Collegiate, which got its first customer, Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., a year ago, now runs health centers for 16,500 students at six colleges in Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
Radford, which has an $800,000 health-center budget, would be its largest customer.
``We're aware of the scrutiny we're getting, not only in Virginia but nationally,'' Harris said.
Under the contract, still being negotiated, the center's 13 full- and part-time workers would become employees of Collegiate, but their jobs would not be guaranteed.
Collegiate CEO Brett Prager said he wants the staff to remain intact, but that will depend upon how well the employees mesh with Collegiate's plans.
When Collegiate took over health services at Sacred Heart, it reduced employees' benefits, but it added staff.
Last week, Prager said he wouldn't ``generalize about staffing needs at Radford,'' but he wants to pursue ``academic links'' between student health services and the college's school of nursing.
Radford's decision to go with Collegiate Health came after a yearlong study that grew out of student concerns about their health services and the college's effort to control costs, Harris said. Four companies - Collegiate, ASG Management, Radford Community Hospital and Montgomery Regional Hospital - were invited to submit proposals for services.
Collegiate's plan was best, Harris said, so the school began negotiations on cost. Should the negotiations fail, which Harris said he doubts will happen, the school will work with another bidder.
By looking to outside operators, the college hoped to be able to improve services and contain costs, he said. Radford's student health service, which is supported by student fees, had a profit of $7,085 last year, but it was in the red $31,000 in 1992 and $105,000 in 1993, records show.
Collegiate, as a private company, can save money by using flexible staffing and by shopping around for supplies, neither of which is possible for a state operation, Harris said.
The decision got mixed reviews from Dr. Maria Mandelstamm, director of the health services center. Mandelstamm, who has been at Radford for 21 years, said she was not included on the study team.
In a written statement, Mandelstamm said she would be happy to ``assist'' for a year in getting the new operation started, but she doesn't believe Collegiate can save over current operating costs.
Mandelstamm said she was told about the plans to privatize student health last August in a meeting with Harris. She said she also learned about the same time that student leaders had complained that the health services center was ``lacking in TLC.''
She said student complaints against the department were related to the small amount of time her staff could spend with a patient because of the size of her staff and the volume of students they see.
Those studying how the center could best be run did not go into the effort to privatize student health services, but concluded that was the right approach, Harris said.
The bookstore, which is run by Barnes & Noble, is the only department Radford currently contracts out.
College bookstores and food services routinely are run by outside contractors, and there is a trend toward the same for student health services, said Marsha Huddle, director of services at Roanoke College.
Huddle said Roanoke College was contacted by Collegiate but didn't invite the company to campus ``because we feel like we're doing a good job now. We actually cut our budget by 40 percent in the past year by changing the way we do things.''
Huddle cut down on the use of physicians and hired a nurse practitioner to work part time. Students run an intensive health education program, she said.
Virginia Tech also wasn't interested in hearing a proposal from Collegiate, because it isn't looking for an outside contractor, Tom Goodale said.
``This is not to say we wouldn't do it in the future,'' he said.
Goodale, vice president for student affairs, is a member of Collegiate's advisory board, which he said is a nonpaid position.
Tech students pay $64.50 per semester for health services; that department has a $2.5 million budget and employs more than 40 people, Goodale said.
``We're not making money,'' he said.
Goodale said he recently saved $100,000 in salaries by merging counseling and student health departments and eliminating a director position.
Tech is trying to get the final $3.5 million it needs to build a $21 million fitness center on campus to combine recreation, counseling and health services under one roof, he said.
Goodale said he has not attended any meetings of the advisory board, but he has met with Prager. Collegiate is the ``new kid on the block,'' and it made some mistakes with its first schools, he said.
``It went in and dismantled programs,'' he said.
Collegiate has since added college health professionals to its staff, and Prager set up the advisory board in an effort to learn more about student health centers and avoid past controversies, Goodale said.
Prager, who is 28, got the idea for the company in 1991 while studying for a master's degree in business administration at Columbia University. He thought of the class project while he waited for an hour at Columbia's health center to get a sprained ankle treated.
For the project, he polled colleges to see if they would be interested in hiring an outside company to run their centers. The response supported his idea, he said. Next, Prager met Stephen Wiggins, founder of Oxford Health Plans, a $700 million health maintenance organization, when Wiggins spoke to one of Prager's classes.
He got $1.2 million in seed money from Oxford Health and $30,000 from Chemical Venture Partners and Venture Medical Associates to start the company. They now own 77 percent of Collegiate; Prager owns 23 percent.
The company, which promotes student hot lines and extensive health education as part of its services, is featured in the Feb. 13 issue of Forbes magazine.
by CNB