WARREN, Ark. – The Bradley County Medical Center Board of Directors met for its monthly meeting on Thursday, Feb. 29 in the BCMC Conference Room. Topics discussed centered around patient volumes, cost report money, MEDITECH, and updates from hospital leadership.
The gathering began with unanimous approval of the previous minutes from the Feb. 1 meeting. Controller Matt Pace gave his report in which he informed the board that acute patient days were up, but most other services were down. The board was reminded this time frame included when the ice storm hit which is partially to blame.
Pace reported the hospital had a gross patient revenue of $4,691,360, while the net operating revenue was $2,026,511 in the first month of 2024. Sales tax revenue was $117,676.19 and the total sales tax fund now stands at a little north of $4.3 million.
CEO/CFO Leslie Huitt stated she pleased with the gross patient revenue number and attributed it to being able to capture revenue quicker in MEDITECH since it’s all electronic now with no paper charts. The cost report is complete from fiscal year 2023 with the hospital expecting to receive $1.5 million from Medicaid and another $645K from Medicare.
Huitt did mention she was frustrated in the decrease in collections and cash though with the way MEDITECH consumed everyone she said it’s hard to be too critical right now. She continued by saying it will take some time to get to where BCMC wants to be with collections in MEDITECH, but there is plenty of money that still needs to be collected from CPSI, the previous electronic health records system.
Chief Nursing Officer Jamie Wolfe spoke at length about TeleSANE, a new service the emergency department will begin to utilize once its training is complete. It’s similar to the IDHI Stroke Program through UAMS that delivers live consultations for potential victims of stroke. TeleSANE allows victims to connect remotely and privately with a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) through video.
Wolfe continued by highlighting Krissy Morrison’s new position of Clinical Nurse Educator to the board. He said you should expect to see more classes at BCMC, including Diabetes Education starting at the Brunson Medical Complex. Those classes will be in the Harry Stevens Conference Room with the first one scheduled for March 12. He finished by mentioning the staff is still optimizing inside MEDITECH which is very time consuming.
Chief Operating Officer Leeanna Williams began by echoing what Wolfe voiced about optimizing in MEDITECH. She touched on the Community Connect event held Feb. 12 as a part of the DRCHSD Grant. The event was well-attended, and she received positive feedback on it. The next workshop as a part of that is scheduled for April 16. She also wanted to commend Morrison as she has hit the ground running in her new role.
Williams then transitioned into the policy approval portion of the meeting. The board unanimously made annual approvals of the Compliance, HISS Security, and Electronic Health Records policy manuals.
The board then approved the use of sales tax funds for two new microscopes for the laboratory department and agreed to cover the costs for Tegria consultants during the MEDITECH transition. The meeting went into executive session before coming back to adjourn.
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