Samaritan Healthcare stays in the black
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald New Samaritan chief financial officer Alex Town detailed highlights from the monthly financial report at the commission meeting Tuesday.
MOSES LAKE — More patients meant good and bad financial news for Samaritan Healthcare, according to a financial report presented to commissioners at their last meeting.
Alex Town, the hospital’s new chief financial officer, said the hospital’s net income is $2.043 million through the June 30. The hospital is in the black, but that’s under the budget target by about 2 percent.
Hospital utilization was up in June, he said, and a busy June helped push many hospital services above their budget targets. “Medical admissions” (not surgery and not obstetric patients) are up 10.6 percent over the budget targets, 575 cases for the year. The hospital has admitted 414 inpatient surgical cases, 7.8 percent above the budget target. The hospital has 1,402 outpatient surgical cases through June 30, 3.6 percent above budget.
For the year the hospital has averaged about 24 people for its daily census, 5.7 percent above budget. Samaritan Clinic has had 11,162 primary care visits, 3.9 percent above budget. There were 9,826 emergency room visits, 1.1 percent below budget, and 519 obstetric admissions, about at the budget target.
However, expenses were up too. Total expenses for 2017 through June 30 were $37.998 million, about 4 percent over the budget projection. “There’s a direct correlation – when revenue is up, expenses follow as well,” Town said.
Expenses for the year to date are about $1.4 million over budget. The biggest portion, about $570,000, included payment to vendors who submitted claims in 2017 for work done in 2016. There were other expenses in that category (purchased services), Town said, but those payments helped push it over budget.
Salaries and benefits made up about $450,000 of the extra expense. About one-third of that is tied to the need to bring in more staff when the hospital has more patients than the staff assigned at the time.
The hospital also has to bring in temporary workers; chief executive officer Teresa Sullivan said hospital officials are working on recruitment programs to address that. Eight nurses have left the hospital between January and June, while the hospital has hired 18, said chief operating officer Kris Neff.