State lawmakers called on hospital officials Thursday to unify if they expect to resolve health care issues facing Northwest Indiana.
"The hospitals need to come together and figure out what's the best fit for alleviating financial woes for your facilities," state Rep. Charlie Brown, D-Gary, told a gathering of about 40 industry professionals at The Times Health Care Advisory Council meeting.
Northwest Indiana health care facilities, like others in the state, increasingly are called upon to find ways to fund care for patients with little or no insurance or other means to pay, officials at the meeting said.
But hospitals in the area face stiff competition from those in Illinois, said Mitch Roob, secretary of the Indiana Family and Social Services agency, which oversees Medicaid and Medicare funding in the state.
As part of a larger medical marketplace, Lake and Porter counties have become net exporters of people with insurance, Roob said.
"You are exporting your higher profitable services, in large part to Illinois," Roob said.
Efforts that could boost the region's health care industry call for cooperation from among the four major hospital systems and several smaller facilities, officials said.
Brown, who has backed the creation of a teaching hospital and trauma center in Gary, either of which would lend status to local hospitals, said the lack of a trauma center "is devastating to all of Northwest Indiana."
But finding money for the ventures will be difficult, Brown said.
"We are all struggling with how to fund it," Brown said.
Brown was one of four elected officials to call for unity at the meeting to launch the newly formed Health Care Advisory Council, made up public and private hospital officials and representative of industry and health care-related businesses, and others.
"You have an opportunity to come up with what you believe is a solution," state Sen. Earline Brown, D-Gary, told the group.
The timing is right, said state Sen. Ed Charbonneau, R-Valparaiso.
"The focus is on a trauma center. The state is listening to us now," he said.
"There are tremendous opportunities in Lake County, if you can manage to come up with a spirit of co-opetition," Roob said.
