NRMC shows profit in April

Nevada Daily Mail

With the end of the fiscal year approaching, the Nevada Regional Medical Center looks to end on a positive note after announcing a profit during the month of April at their financial committee meeting Tuesday.

Mike Harbor, who is the interim chief financial officer while NRMC looks for a replacement for CFO Greg Shaw, who is no longer at NRMC, said he was happy to use black ink in April's financial report, which showed an increase of more than $380,000.

Much of that gain was due to $900,000 in disproportionate share dollars presented to NRMC. About half of that has been put into NRMC's finances in April.

But even aside from that amount, Harbor said NRMC would have faced a loss of less than $90,000 instead of the average loss of about $200,000 per month, with much of that additional revenue coming as a result of the increase in volume. Year to date, NRMC has a loss of just over $1.6 million, compared to 2014's deficit of more than $4.2 million by the same time.

Harbor and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Leeper both said that they need to continue their diligence in providing services efficiently in order to cut costs and improve revenue over the final two months of the fiscal year, when NRMC faced the greatest losses in 2014. The hospital lost a total of about $8 million last year.

Steve Branstetter, long term care administrative officer, also gave a positive report from the long term care facilities, saying the Moore-Few and Barone care centers had a combined profit of more than $51,000, for a total annual gain of $352,664 on a budget of $198,107.

Branstetter said the centers have had record numbers of Medicare patients along with high census numbers in general.

"Numbers keep climbing and we're real pleased with that," Branstetter said, adding that the Barone Alzheimers Care Center in particular has had a high volume of residents.

Unfortunately, Branstetter said they are understaffed as they continue in their search for nurses, but added they are in the process of interviewing prospects. Because of the volume, they have also had high pharmacy bills as well as contract labor.

While the average daily census at the facilities were abnormally high in the past three months, Branstetter said in putting together the budget, they decided to instead go with the average number for the year, resulting in similar census numbers from the previous year's budget.

"It's a tough call," Branstetter said of that decision, as they tried to determine whether the recent numbers were merely a trend or would continue into the new fiscal year.

The financial committee, however, encouraged Branstetter to make an adjustment to the census numbers, increasing Barone's daily census number slightly from 74 to 76 days. That adjustment would increase the budget projection from $218,000 to about $280,000.

"I think we all have to ask ourselves to stretch our expectations," Leeper said, although he still recognizes the need to be conservative.

Harbor also presented a first draft of the 2016 fiscal year budget for NRMC, listing some of the patient statistics they hope to see change, such as an increase in surgeries after the hospital faced a more than 10 percent decline in 2015.

The budget presented included a bottom line loss of more than $1.8 million by year-end. Board member Larry Bledsoe requested that they go over the budget once again and try to find a way to make it break even. The board will hold a budget work session June 9, to look at budget changes and potentially approve the new budget.