Hospital Authority Approves Implementation of Financial Turnaround Initiatives

Stephens County Hospital Authority approves a motion to continue working with Stroudwater Associates to implement the operational and financial turnaround initiatives that they previously identified.

Back in May the hospital authority approved the healthcare consulting firm to evaluate areas of the hospital in order to identify and continue initiatives toward operational and financial improvements, according to Hospital Administrator Lynne Anderson.

According to Anderson, the board approved Roger Forgey to execute these initiatives and he began on Tuesday.

Anderson said he will be working on a number of things.

“We need to work on improving our cash flow,” said Anderson. “We’ll be working on the coding and billing processes that help us get the bills out and dollars in because reimbursement is so important to us. He’ll be helping us look at our volumes to see how we can increase our volumes. Just things like that that will have an impact on our financial situation.”

Anderson said they believe that these key initiatives will help improve the hospital’s finances.

“We think that those key initiatives improve our finances which is what we need to do,” said Anderson. “We have good quality, we just have got to get our finances stabilized. Roger is going to help us implement those plans.  We’ll be looking at our productivity, making sure that we perform as efficiently as we can.”

Board member Stan Roberts said the board is looking at all their options at this time. One of those being that Stroudwater’s assistance help turn the hospital’s financial situation around and they become profitable enough to continue operating as Stephens County Hospital.

And Roberts said another option would be to look at the possibility of a larger entity interested in purchasing the hospital.

But Anderson said regardless of which direction they go, they have to improve their financial stability.