Hospital board reviews patient surveys

Cindy Buck, Nevada Regional Medical Center Chief Financial Officer, received an award from Quorum Health Resources as CFO of the year. CEO Judy Feuquay presented Buck the award at Tuesday's board of director's meeting.

"We celebrate the award of Cindy Buck as CFO of the Year for the QHR hospitals," Feuquay said. "This honor was bestowed on Cindy during the CFO conference in Nashville earlier this month. We are proud of Cindy and her accomplishments."

Sara Lawhorne spoke to the board and gave them the results of surveys conducted with patients after their treatment at the hospital. Many of the results were positive with NRMC receiving higher marks than the national and state averages. Lawhorne said one result puzzled her, when former patients were asked about their treatment they gave the hospital high scores but when asked if they would recommend the hospital to others few said they would.

"Frankly, I don't understand it," Lawhorne said. "We have all these high scores but people aren't recommending the hospital."

Feuquay told the board they would look into the results of the survey and see if there were any particular reason for the anomalous answers and attempt to come up with a strategy to bring recommendations up.

When the financial report was given it was noted that revenue was down, not because of less than anticipated revenues from operations but because the interest the hospital was receiving on its investments was off because of the overall economy.

"We have less total revenue than budgeted," Buck said. "Our operating income is down, but our expenses are down by the same percentage so operational revenue is at budget. It's the interest we're getting that has gone down and there is nothing we can do to change what that is."

Buck told the board the company the hospital contracted with to take care of the older accounts receivable was not clearing as much revenue as expected and they had been asked to step up the pace of collections.

"We were told they would have a 90 percent clearance and they aren't close to that," Buck said. "They brought in another employee to help pick up the pace. Of course, they're on a percentage basis so if they don't bring it in they don't get paid."

The board approved several items during the meeting; $33,000 for coding and reimbursement software, a contract with Dr. Sean Gravely to interpret EKGs at $11 each, continued a contract with Diamond Healthcare for management services of the Behavioral Health Unit at $142,000, a new truck for the Plant Operations department not to exceed $30,000, and a total of $325,000 for kitchen renovation.