Auburn Memorial Hospital is not the only central New York hospital that's engaged in a turnaround.

Syracuse's Crouse Hospital achieved a turnaround that was noteworthy enough be profiled in a May 2006 report profiling strategies for financially distressed hospitals.

The report was primarily sponsored by the Healthcare Financial Management Association, the nation's 34,000-member organization for health care executives.

Crouse Hospital filed for bankruptcy with debts of $91 million. When it emerged from protection two years later, it had achieved a steady financial state after it hired the turnaround firm of Speltz & Weis.

It got there by decreasing union wage increases to 3 percent from 8 to 9 percent through concessions; negotiating a five-year deferral of debt; renegotiating supplier contracts to reduce expenses; having all contracts reviewed by senior management; and implementing responsibility reporting meetings.

The reason hospitals get to Crouse or AMH's state?

“Lack of oversight and accountability by the board and/or senior management are evident in most deeply troubled organizations. The organizations might have been profitable in earlier decades, but increasing competition and constrained payment are chipping away at once-healthy margins,” the report said.

The result includes poor relations with physicians and increasing losses.

Any turnaround plan must involve multidisciplinary teams and comprehensive improvement plans, the report said.

It's a model akin to what Wellspring has been hired to do for AMH.

The report said goals should include renegotiating managed care and supplier contracts, improving the length of patient stays, and intervening in the revenue cycle to make payments to the hospital more efficient.