Officials want club patrons off the pole

By Joe Schoenmann

Sunday, Sept. 6, 2009 | 2 a.m.

If county officials have their way, patrons of the Strip’s many nightclubs will no longer be allowed to get their kicks on the clubs’ stripper poles.

Are you telling me visitors will no longer get a chance to kick off their shoes and swing around those brass floor-to-ceiling poles?

County spokesmen confirmed an effort is under way to write up a regulation prohibiting the use of the poles by anyone other than the go-go dancers hired by the clubs.

Because stripper poles are the gateway to all manner of depravity?

Well, apparently the thinking is that they encourage some nightclub patrons to act too much like strippers. There’s apparently been too much pole-induced stripping, flashing and other naughtiness that not supposed to be allowed in the dance clubs. The idea of making the poles “for employee use only” first came up at the Aug. 18 County Commission meeting during a discussion about Prive nightclub, which was fined $500,000 by the state Gaming Control Board for a variety of offenses alleged to have occurred within the club, including lewd behavior. During the meeting, Jacqueline Holloway, business license director, talked about restricting access to dance poles at Prive and all other clubs. “We don’t want to walk into any of these locations and see patrons on the dance poles,” she said.

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With state funding cuts and a growing number of unemployed Clark County residents, you’d expect University Medical Center would be on track to lose tons more money this fiscal year than last fiscal year. After all, it is obligated to provide care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay.

It turns out the hospital is so far losing only a bit more. At least that’s what county officials say. County spokesman Erik Pappa told the Sun on Friday the dollar amounts are not yet known.

If what they say is true, though, what’s going on at the hospital? Are more people with health insurance going there for treatment? Are growing numbers of indigent patients somehow able to pay?

Kathy Silver, the hospital’s CEO, said she isn’t sure but the hospital is seeing fewer patients, which is likely a contributing factor. “We’re not as busy as we were historically and that’s probably the only thing stemming the tide,” she said.

Fewer people overall are using the hospital, which saves on overtime and supplies expenses, and the hospital has enacted cost-saving measures in purchasing, billing and other areas. On the expense side, “more and more people are showing up without insurance,” Silver said.

The hospital lost about $53 million last year. County fiscal experts are working on a report to be issued Sept. 17 on UMC’s current financial health. In the future, though, the county hospital management may answer to someone other than the county commissioners.

How’s that?

The hospital’s trustees are the county commissioners, but the commissioners are also responsible for overseeing 37 other county departments. As Commissioner Larry Brown said last week, they could easily spend all their time on hospital matters. Instead of doing that, they hired HG Healthcare Consultants to study other ways of governing the hospital. Commissioners seemed very interested in the option of appointing a board to provide oversight.

That’s done elsewhere in the U.S., right?

Yes, in many places. And in at least one case, Minnesota’s Hennepin County, after a switch to that type of system, the county hospital’s losses were reduced by nearly $16 million. Dave Albright, finance director of the Minneapolis hospital, said that with a new board that focuses only on the medical center, “it’s just a different culture and feeling. The hospital doesn’t feel like just another county department. Now you have leaders who are there to run a health care organization. The board has strong ties to the health care community.”

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County Quote of the Week:

“You’re one of the only (hospital directors) I know who says, ‘Boy, it’s nice that occupancy’s down.’ ”

— Hugh P. Greeley of HG Healthcare Consultants to Kathy Silver, UMC chief executive, referring to a drop in patients at UMC apparently being good for the hospital’s finances.