The Bradley County Medical Center held its monthly meeting on Thursday, July 25. The meeting was opened with the approval of the minutes from June’s meeting. A motion was made to approve, and all voted in favor.
The board then heard the financial report. Business for July was average. The hospital had $4.4 million in gross patient revenue. There was a net operating revenue of $1.8 million with a net loss of $163,012.00. Cash increased by over $250,000.00 and accounts receivable decreased by over $300,000.00. The hospital added $118,000.00 to the sales tax fund which brought the balance to $4.5 million.
Leslie Huitt, hospital C.E.O. presented her report to the board. She said that positive things happened at the hospital in June, referring to the cash increase and accounts receivable decrease. Compared to June, the hospital’s collections have increased.
Hospital C.N.O Jamie Wolfe then presented his report. The hospital was awarded the bronze award from the American Heart Association for the last two quarters of 2023 regarding the care of patients.
“We were proud to see that two quarters in a row,” Wolfe said. “Hopefully we’ll see a trend where we get that more and more and maybe we’ll get a higher award next time.”
The award is significant and will give the hospital national recognition in publications like magazines.
In June there were six positive COVID cases and so far, in July, the hospital has seen nine. Wolfe said that there could be more, but it’s possible that people were experiencing milder symptoms and did not get tested. There has been one positive case of influenza.
Next hospital C.O.O., Leeanna Williams presented her report. She started by talking about how the BCMC was not severely affected by the CrowdStrike outage on Friday, July 19. CrowdStrike is a popular cybersecurity company that experienced an outage after pushing a faulty update. This caused problems with airlines, TV broadcasters, banks, and other essential services.
“The only thing that we saw that was down was the ability to remotely log in,” Williams said.
The hospital is experiencing problems with an electrical box in the room where the MRI machine is located. The machine itself is experiencing no issues, however the hospital cannot use it right now due to the room being dark and safety concerns.
On Wednesday, July 24, fire alarms were set off at the hospital. The fire department responded to the call, but they determined that it was caused by a system error and there was no fire.
The board then moved on to annual policy approval on employment health, swing bed policies, and utilization review.
In other business, they talked about the legislative audit review of cybersecurity controls. The audit did not uncover any major weaknesses or threats within the hospital system.
Due to not being able to run the M.R.I. machine, volume for July was a little lower which has also caused revenue for July to be down.
In May, there was a higher volume of ultrasound appointments compared to before the hospital closed the O.B. department. That is due to the lack of an ultrasound technician at the Mainline clinic, therefore patients are being sent to the hospital. As of right now, the hospital only have one ultrasound machine and cannot book as many appointments as needed. The rural health clinic does have a machine that needs normal maintenance and a new battery. No additional staffing will be required after the extra machine is repaired. Funds taken from the sales tax fund will be used to pay for the repairs of the MRI and ultrasound machines.
The board then went into an executive session.
The next meeting will be on August 23, 2024.
