Medical Center Closes Mall Facility
By Don Schanche Jr., The Macon Telegraph, Ga.
Sep. 30–The Medical Center of Central Georgia’s education career center at Macon Mall has closed, and the hospital expects to make other cost-cutting changes in the near future.
Among those changes: Relying more on generic medications at the outpatient pharmacy at the W.T. Anderson Center, which serves uninsured patients.
Andy Galloway, senior vice president, said the changes have been in the works for months, and are not related to the news that the Medical Center will no longer be a part of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia network beginning Saturday. But he said Bibb County’s decision earlier this year to cut more than $400,000 from its contribution to the hospital did play a part.
“Because of the county’s action we were looking at our total operation and looking for ways to cut expenses,” Galloway said.
He said the decision to close the Community Health Education and Career Center at the mall was not sudden.
“We had determined some time ago, with the expenses that we were incurring out there, we weren’t going to continue,” Galloway said. “We waited until the lease was up and decided we weren’t going to renew it. … It wasn’t something we felt we needed to do precipitously.” The lease ends this week. The center closed Wednesday.
The center at the mall, upstairs next to Sears, offered smoking cessation courses, cardiopulmonary resuscitation classes, exercise classes and other services.
Meanwhile, Galloway said the Medical Center expects within six to eight weeks to make changes in the indigent pharmacy program.
“We are hoping this budget cycle that we’re going to cut a good bit of our expenditures in our outpatient pharmacy,” he said. “We hope to have done that by going to a drug formulary, concentrating on the use of generics.”
He said needed medications won’t be eliminated, but pharmacists will provide generic drugs. They have the same active ingredients as brand-name drugs but are cheaper.
Galloway also said Medicare patients who use the clinic will be moved to the new Medicare prescription drug benefit.
Hospital officials said last year that the pharmacy’s roll had increased from 7,140 to 10,000 between 2003 and 2004. They said the Medical Center is one of only four hospitals in Georgia that provides prescription drug assistance to the poor.
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