millions of dollars in the hole<\/a> and had only days of cash on hand, according to a “survival plan” report compiled by the Dallas County auditor earlier this year. The County Commissioners Court approved $600,000 in public funds to hire the organization a new financial team in a special-called meeting last month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.wfaa.com\/assets\/shared-images\/icons\/arrow-circle-down.svg\")
<\/p>\n
\n This story continues below.
<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s been a really difficult year for us,” said interim Metrocare CEO Tate Ringer. “There\u2019s been a perfect storm of a number of things happening.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ringer said larger trends — like the price of employee healthcare, an increased number of patients seeking care and inflationary pressures — have all contributed to challenges, but much of the problem was of Metrocare’s making as it continued to provide programs for which funding had run out or for which it could not get reimbursed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Many of these things were preventable; we could\u2019ve responded sooner. And not responding as quickly as we should have meant the problems were bigger,” Ringer said. “That being said, there are things that are fixable. And it was preventable that means it\u2019s fixable.”<\/p>\n
She said the organization has already undergone two rounds of program and staff cuts. The county’s “survival plan” called for daily financial emergency meetings, spending freezes, re-negotiation of contracts and an 8-12% cut in the number of administrative staffers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“That plan is now on steroids,” Ringer said. “We\u2019ve got to do what it takes, and we have the right people on board to get there; it\u2019s just going to be not without challenges, it\u2019s a hard road.”<\/p>\n
But she said failure is not an option for the organization.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“That\u2019s not a possibility that I\u2019m willing to entertain. I don’t think many people are because we are the safety net for people who have some of the deepest and hardest challenges in life,” she said. “This is for services that keep people out of hospitals, that keep people out of jails.”\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Metrocare received an $18 million loan from Parkland Hospital to keep it afloat, but its interim CEO warns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103],"class_list":["post-386693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}