THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 10, 1997 TAG: 9702100082
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: 42 lines
When University of Virginia Medical Center realized that it would likely end the fiscal year with an extra $20.8 million, it wasted no time in spending some of it.
The school's board of visitors voted Saturday to spend $3.4 million over five years in a joint venture to purchase a dozen medical practices in Culpeper.
Since 1995 the school has acquired 20 practices with 39 doctors, mostly in Central Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley. The Culpeper practices will be added if negotiations are successful, said Dr. Robert W. Cantrell, U.Va.'s vice president and provost for health sciences.
Acquiring medical practices gives the hospital leverage with insurers and helps the hospital get patient care referrals, he said. The purchase will be a joint venture between the Medical Center and Culpeper Memorial Hospital.
``This will allow us throughout central Virginia to have a network of nonprofit hospitals or physicians that provide good, cost-effective health care,'' he said.
The projected $20.8 million surplus was a part of an amended budget for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. Revenues in the amended budget total $413.5 million.
In the original budget presented last June, officials had projected a $3.8 million surplus on revenues of $387 million. Surplus revenues are known as profits.
Cantrell said the $17 million difference in the two budgets was the result of expected cuts in federal and state support that didn't materialize, overdue insurance payments and money left over from the previous year's budget and cost-cutting.
He also said employees have been working to hold expenses down, and that the rest of the surplus will probably be spent on new equipment and operations.
In other business Saturday, the board approved a 10-year enrollment plan that calls for 740 additional students at the school between 1997 and 2006, bringing the total number of students at U.Va. to 19,185.