Samaritan hires new chief operating officer

Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald Samaritan Healthcare commissioner Tom Frick received a plaque recognizing his 25 years on the hospital board at the regular meeting Tuesday. Director of communications Gretchen Youngren also gave Frick a Samaritan Healthcare coat.

by CHERYL SCHWEIZER
Staff Writer | October 27, 2016 1:00 AM

MOSES LAKE — Samaritan Healthcare officials have hired a new chief operating officer, scheduled to start work in January.

Chief executive officer Teresa Sullivan announced the hiring of Chris Neff at the regular hospital board meeting Tuesday. Neff will replace Becky DeMers, who will become the Samaritan’s chief of nursing.

Sullivan said the COO’s job will be revised, along with some of the jobs done by administrators. As the health care system changes, the way the hospital and other health care organizations operate will be changing too, she said. Health care organizations will have to work closely together, she said, “looking at the whole care continuum. How do we help keep patients out of the hospital and either take care of them in the community before they get sick, or move them to the appropriate place for their care in the future?”

Sullivan said she worked with Neff in her previous job, and that organization was a hospital but also provided a number of services, including an ambulance, home care, hospice, senior housing, assisted living and transitional care. Neff will be working with equivalent organizations in Moses Lake, she said.

Current chief nursing officer Kathryn Trumball will move to a new position, director of patient experience. Hospital officials will hire a new administrator for Samaritan Clinic, she said, replacing Kurt Kuykendall. Kuykendall will return to his original job overseeing hospital procedures and their improvement.

Sullivan said the hospital still has some open administrative jobs, including the director of physician recruitment, quality assurance director and director for the hospital’s imaging department. Hospital officials delayed filling those jobs while Samaritan was in affiliation talks with Confluence Health, Sullivan said. The two sides broke off those talks and now hospital officials are working to fill those jobs, she said.

In other business, Sullivan reported the hospital is still turning a profit as of the end of September.

The number of hospital patients through nine months is higher than the same period in 2015 and higher than the 2016 budget projections, Sullivan said. That has resulted in an increase in revenue, both over the same period in 2015 and the budget projection. The net income through the end of September was about $3.109 million, 2.2 percent above the budget projection.

Obstetrics cases are below the budget projection, and so is emergency room utilization. The OB department had one bad month in March, and that’s still being felt, she said. The ER has about 4 percent more patients than in the same period in 2015, she said, but that’s about 4 percent under the budget projection.

Expenses are eight-tenths of 1 percent over budget.

Samaritan Clinic has treated fewer patients than the budget projection or the same period in 2015. Sullivan said that was due to some vacancies among the clinic's medical staff for a while. The implementation of a new computer system required a cutback in the number of patients scheduled for a while, Kuykendall said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.