Warren Moore has a new hospital tower to open, a $150 million records system to put to work and a growing number of uninsured patients to care for, thanks to a bill he says was big but far from beautiful.
And that’s the list he knows about. Moore, who becomes CEO of Inspira Health on Jan. 1, is sure there will be more items and issues.
“I’m very confident that two months from now there’ll be something we didn’t know about that’s new,” he said. “We’ll adapt and we’ll focus on that.”
Moore, Inspira’s president and chief operating officer, will succeed Amy Mansue, who announced her retirement Tuesday.
He laid out some of his key priorities in an interview with BINJE.
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The tower: Inspira is building a five-story, 102-bed tower at Inspira Medical Center Mullica Hill. The project is valued at $240 million and will raise the hospital’s bed count by nearly half, adding intensive care, medical/surgical, maternal child health and imaging space.
It broke ground in fall 2024 and is expected to open in early 2027.
“We’ve got to get this tower open next year and get it staffed and get patients in it,” Moore said.
Electronic records: Inspira recently spent $150 million on the Epic electronic health records platform. Making the most of it will take a year or two of focused work, Moore said.
“We need to spend a lot of time on leveraging everything that Epic has made available to us,” he said.
The uninsured: Federal changes to the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid mean more people in South Jersey will lose coverage, Moore said, and Inspira has to adjust.
“There are more people without insurance, and there will continue to be people without insurance, right? So, how do we adjust as a system to meet their needs?” he said. “That might be more urgent care. That might be figuring out how we partner urgent care with EDs, although that’s a challenge in our state. But we like challenges.”
The goal, he said, is to keep people from waiting until they’re in crisis.
“These people need a place where they can get their care, so they don’t show up in our ED extremely ill,” he said.
Transportation: In South Jersey, it often comes down to getting there, Moore said. Access is everything.
“Transportation is a nightmare for folks down here,” he said. “We need to be able to get those services closer to home.”
That means more facilities, he said, and Inspira will keep building them if needed. It also means more efforts like South Jersey Connects, the regional transportation pilot.
Research: Moore pointed to Inspira’s partnerships with Rowan University, Cooper University Health Care and Rutgers-Camden.
“We know research creates economic opportunity,” he said. “It builds businesses, it builds the economy, it creates jobs here.”
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Moore said one priority isn’t more important than another — and that he knows things beyond the system’s control will add to the wish list of goals.
Keeping a broader perspective is key, he said.
Like with the Medicaid cuts. Moore said he knows the impact goes beyond basic health care.
They hit patients first, he said, and they hit health systems, which lose money they use to care for people. But they also pull money out of local economies.
“You can’t take a trillion dollars out of the United States economy and not have an impact, right?” he said.
In South Jersey, he estimated the hit at $250 million a year. Inspira will push on advocacy, he said, and look for ways to replace the funding or do the work more efficiently.
“This team’s up for the challenge,” he said.
The region, he said, is the same way.
“When we all put our heads together here, amazing things can happen,” he said.
