Samaritan hospital use up from 2025, but below 2026 budget expectations

MOSES LAKE — While Samaritan Hospital is a little busier in 2026 than 2025, patient utilization is less than projected in 2026 budget through the first three quarters of the year.  

Chief Financial Officer Darryl Wolfe said inpatient revenue was about 6% below the budget projection for the year to date, and about 12% below the projected revenue for September. Revenues were higher than budget projections in May, June and August, but lower than projections during the rest of the year.  

As of the end of September, Samaritan had a net loss of about $3.4 million for the year. The 2026 budget projected a year-to-date loss of about $456,700 through September.  

Hospital utilization has been slightly ahead of 2025, but not where hospital officials projected.  

"On our average daily census, which is your midnight census, we're about 10% below where we thought we'd be for the year, and I think the accumulation of that is why we're about 6% off so far this year," Wolfe said. "It is a bit of a moving target, so it can go back up just as quickly. But overall, quite a bit lower so far this year than we expected." 

Bad debt and charity care expenses were about $1.9 million, slightly over the budget projection, and about $15 million for the year to date. That's about $2 million over the projection.  

"We did have a couple months (where) we had a lot of cleanup that was taking place with accounts from 2025," Wolfe said. "Some of those older accounts, you get to a point where you realize they're no longer collectible, and then you move those to bad debt and that drives up that uncompensated care number up a bit." 

As those transactions have been completed, Wolfe said the bad debt and charity care numbers are trending back down. 

"It's flattening back out closer to what we would expect, given where we are in 2026," he said. 

Inpatients are people who have to stay overnight or longer in the hospital. Inpatients are counted every night, which provides the daily census count.  

Revenue from people who end up staying in the hospital overnight or longer is about 8% below the budget projections, but surgical cases who stay overnight or longer are about 5% above the budget projections, Wolfe said.  

However, some of the services have not been used as much as anticipated, overall surgical services being an example.  

"I think when it comes to surgical services, we just haven't seen things materialize that we thought might when we put the budget together a year ago," Wolfe said.  

Outpatient revenue, people who are treated and go home the same day, has been below budget projections all year and remained that way in September. Wolfe said it's moving in the right direction, however. 

"It looks like things are picking up a bit," he said. "The month of September, we're quite a bit closer to what we expected." 

Some departments are outperforming the projections, he said. 

"We are better than budget in diagnostic imaging as well as the rehabilitation services," he said.  

Total expenses were below the budget projection for the first three quarters of the year. 

"We're still 3% below the budget, which is what we would hope since our revenues are down," Wolfe said.