New uninsured fee structure coming to NRMC

Nevada Daily Mail

The Nevada Regional Medical Center's financial committee met Nov. 23 to discuss its price comparison with nearby hospitals and to talk about the hospital's financial standing.

NRMC CEO, Kevin Leeper began the discussion of price comparisons by telling the members of the committee he felt the prices were too high, although compared to other hospitals like Joplin, they were competitive.

"We are really poised and excited about addressing a major concern in the health care in general, and that is list pricing.... Our prices are not out of whack with Joplin, or Kansas City or Fort Scott, they're just too high," Leeper said. "Quite honestly, hospitals in general, [prices] have gone up."

He said the financial committee had been discussing this topic for months and he wanted to be more aggressive with a plan and give a discount to the uninsured population.

Leeper said after the meeting, he was not ready to reveal specific prices, but hopefully by this week the details of prices for uninsured patients would be online.

He said he wants three prices for uninsured patients where depending on how quickly the patient would be able to pay the bill back, the greater the discount the patient would get.

Before NRMC can fully commit to this new pricing for the uninsured, they needed to dig into the legality with the hospital's lawyer to make sure Medicare, Medicaid, and other insurances would not be affected.

Larry Bledsoe, financial board secretary, said he felt making costs for health care less expensive to those who had no insurance would be a good investment because it could mean having more people choose NRMC over other hospitals in the area. Others on the board agreed.

"It would be nice to generate some phone calls," Steve Russ, chairman of the board said.

Also during the meeting, Steve Branstetter, administrative officer and Mike Harbor, interim chief financial officer, shared their reports on the Moore-Few Care Center and NRMC, respectively.

Branstetter told the board Moore-Few "really matched up to the budget" in October. For the month, the care center made a profit of $247 and the Barone Alzheimer Care Center had a loss of $212. But the net gain for the fiscal year was $16,412. Financially, Branstetter said the care centers were about even with where they stood last year.

He said the loss of money at the Barone Care Center was due to the loss of four patients, but he expects the next quarter to be better.

"The last quarter of the year, historically, we don't see a surge in patients at either building because everybody is trying to have one more Christmas, one more thanksgiving," said Angela Barett, administrator at Barone. "And it's not until they have that family gathering they realize that you know, dads putting powder in his coffee instead of sugar, and things were not as kosher as they thought it were."

Branstetter said he was worried about a nursing shortage. The board breifley discussed a nation-wide nursing shortage.

Heather Brockmeyer, the human resources administrator said most city hospitals require nurses with a four-year degree, so most nurses are either still in school or going back to school to get access to city hospital jobs.

"But we have always been short on nurses," Brockmeyer said.

Harbor told the board NRMC continued to lose money in October. November's loss was significantly smaller than October's loss however. Last month, NRMC lost $375,000 because they saw fewer patients than they had predicted. The loss in October of $9,000 gave Harbor reason to say he thought NRMC would be making a profit before the end of this year.

"The month of October was very close to a breakeven," according to the income statement Harbor wrote for the financial committee. "The loss was only $9,000... In October of 2014, the medical center's loss was 585,000."

The statement said the net revenue was unfavorable to the budget, but the medical center is still "well over" from the prior year. Expenses were under budget, but salaries were over budget. Harbor told the finance committee this was something they would have to look into fixing.

"I would hope to get us even with the budget by the end of the calendar year," Harbor told the board.