MHSC makes fiscal strides

The Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County has made quite the turn around in its finances in one fiscal year.

According to Sweetwater County Commissioner John Kolb, who acts as a liaison to MHSC, the audit recently conducted on the hospital came back clean.

Kolb said the auditing firm has been the group that has been watching the hospital for years.

“Never have they seen a hospital of that size make that big of a turn around in one year,” Kolb said. “They had a clean audit. It’s probably a rare thing for an organization that size.”

He said the hospital has made an $8 million-dollar turn around.

According to the independent auditor’s report from CliftonLarsonAllen LLP., out of Minneapolis, “The hospital recorded an operating loss of $16,843 and $8,071,384 in 2018 and 2017, respectively.”

“We decreased our expenses by $8 million,” hospital Chief Financial Officer Tami Love said. “We were just pleased with the outcome of the audit.”

Love said the big decrease in expenditures came from decreasing salaries and wages through attrition, which added up to about 19 full-time equivalent employees. They also decreased the amount of nursing positions that were contracted out. Love said it costs three times as much to contract a nursing position out versus hiring a nurse. Making sure employees didn’t obtain overtime was also something the hospital did to cut expenses. All of these measures paid off.

Love said they cut about $6.7 million and had an increase in revenue of $1.1 million to get them about to that $8 million mark.

As for this fiscal year, the hospital has only had three months of operation and so far they are coming in above what revenue predictions were. Love said they had an operating gain of $670,000, which is about $500,000 more than what they budgeted for.

“We’re continuing to watch our expenses and increase our revenues,” Love said.

She said the hospital has seen a decrease in inpatient care, but an increase outpatient care.

As for cash on hand, the hospital ended fiscal year 2017-2018 with 111 days of cash on hand.

Currently, they are at 122 days of cash on hand. This number is important to remember because the hospital must have a least 75 days of cash on hand to fulfill its bond requirements.