Stephens Co. Hospital FY 14 Audit Shows Positive Bottom Line

Stephens County Hospital receives good financial news in its Fiscal Year 2014 audit.

The audit results were presented at Monday’s regular Hospital Authority meeting.

Administrator Ed Gambrell said that Stephens County Hospital received a clean audit opinion, which is the opinion one wants to receive.

Furthermore, the audit shows that the hospital had a positive bottom line for its Fiscal Year 2014, which went from October 1, 2013 to September 30, 2014, of about $85,000.

Gambrell said that is great news.

“I was telling the board members earlier that I have never been as happy to have a positive bottom line as this year,” said Gambrell. “Even though it is a small positive bottom line, it is still positive. I am just happy and proud and I cannot say enough about the sacrifices so many people have put forth this past year.”

He went on to say that the $85,000 gain in Fiscal Year 2014 is a major turnaround from the hospital’s Fiscal Year 2013, which ended in a loss of almost $2.5 million.

“Since that time, we have really done a lot of cost-cutting,” said Gambrell. “We have worked on improving our coding, which comes from charting on medical records, which will increase re-imbursement, so we worked hard on that.”

Another factor that contributed to the bottom line in Fiscal Year 2014 was the final resolution of a dispute between the hospital and Medicare over a 2009 cost report.

Gambrell said Medicare finally paid the hospital back as had been expected and some of that money was booked into Fiscal Year 2014.

“We did get a check from Medicare for approximately $1.7 million,” said Gambrell. “They did agree that we were right and, basically, they were wrong, and they did pay us.”

He added that the 2009 cost report is not the only such report that the hospital is discussing with Medicare.

“We still have probably another approximately $1.4 to $1.5 million from other years that hopefully in the next year or so, we will get,” said Gambrell.

Looking at the current fiscal year, Gambrell said it is going well so far financially.

According to Gambrell, the hospital is in the black for the current fiscal year by somewhere in the neighborhood of $88,000 or $89,000, adding that December was another positive month for the hospital.

Gambrell said he feels like that will continue.

“We are in a much better position now than we were a couple of years ago to handle the new state of health care and the decreased re-imbursement and, at times, the decreased census,” said Gambrell. “From that standpoint, we are in much better shape than we used to be.”

Stephens County Hospital Authority members commended staff for the audit results and the hard work that staff put in to achieve those.