Nevada Regional Medical Center board adds new staff

Nevada Daily Mail

Nevada Regional Medical Center Interim CEO Dave Hample announced the hiring of a psychiatrist, a psychiatric certified nurse practitioner, a family practice obstetrician, and a new Barone Alzheimer's Care center medical director during Tuesday's board of directors meeting.

Psychiatrist Armah Cooper will start in the fall; psychiatric CNP Elena Sass begins in July and FPOB Amanda Turner, who is a family practitioner and obstetrician, starts in August. Heather Russell will take over as medical director at Barone, effective July 1, with a $6,000 contract.

The board also approved an $841,282 contract to implement a hospitalist program at NRMC. The contract would provide 24/7 hospitalist coverage with roughly two NRMC physicians and two Freeman Hospital physicians beginning in the fall or winter this year.

At NRMC, hospitalists (generally, primary care physicians) will admit patients to the hospital when necessary, especially people who are in the ER who don't have a primary care physician. For patients with regular doctors, the primary physician and hospitalist will work together until patients are admitted. After admission, the hospitalist takes over patient care.

The hospitalist fees from services rendered would be retained by NRMC, which Hample said brings the cost of the program down by $300,000.

In other business, the board approved a $63,900 contract for a Clinical Bone Densitometer and $250,000 of restricted funds to increase cash on hand if necessary.

"By the end of this week, we will be pretty tight on operating cash," CFO Greg Shaw said. "On an operational basis, we're pretty well depleted. It will start to build back up again in June, because we're cutting back on payments to vendors and we expect cash receipts to increase. I don't think we're going to have to use (the additional funds). We are expecting some money to come in, but there's always the concern that will get hung up somewhere. If we don't need it, we won't use it."

In the CFO report, Shaw said while the hospital has done well with lowering expenses, Patient Financial Services needs to continue to improve.

"Average daily expenses are down 7 percent, or $7,000 a day, for the last three months," Shaw said. "Expenses, overall, from February to April 2014, are down $800,000 from February to April 2013."

He said the hospital experienced good volume numbers in April, making the month's loss of $185,000 the lowest this year.

The net accounts receivable days, the average number of days it takes to collect the payments due, reached 97.3, however.

"It's due to issues in PFS," Shaw said. "Cerner is helping staff learn the system. For the first time since I've been here, I've heard the PFS manager say we're making progress. Hopefully, we'll see no more increase in AR days in May and improve it in June, July and August. We can be as busy as we are in April, but if we don't collect the cash, it doesn't mean a thing."

He said Cerner told him they think they can bring in $3.7 million in collections by the end of June.

"If they can, that's about $1.5 million more than what we typically collect at the end of the month," he said. "I'm going to ask them for their plans to get that through the door when we struggle to get $2 to $2.2 million on our own. How can they change this process around without adding more bodies to the process? What are they going to do to hit that target?"

In the CEO report, Hample said unassigned call, patients who don't have a primary care physician, coverage in the ER has been addressed with nearly all doctors signing a contract to provide inpatient services and behavioral health medical consults.

"We have submitted the Meaningful Use Medicaid audit paperwork accepting an adjustment, resulting in a $672,000 receivable, which we expect in the next two weeks," he said in his report. "NRMC received Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems best performer for quietness, exemplary service for most improved ambulatory surgery and exemplary service for most improved inpatient ratings."

In the long term care report, administrative officer Steve Branstetter said Barone and Moore-Few made a net profit of $14,979 in April.

"Year-to-date, we've made $75,847 compared to last year's $410,140 loss," he said. "Our average census is 104, for both. Accounts receivable days did increase to 56.18, an increase of 1.93 days compared to March."