Alva Review-Courier -

Tuesday evening, Alva Hospital Authority Chair Jason Gaisford welcomed Dr. Callie Mosburg to the board. Her appointment was approved by the city council. She replaces Jay Randels who resigned.

Share CEO Kandice Allen said the sale of Share Convalescent Home to Beadles is “moving at a snail’s pace, but it is moving along.” The land survey was expected to be completed on Friday.

Allen was excited about an opportunity to do a phone interview with a new surgeon from Tulsa who may be able to work for the hospital.

Allen was also pleased with the hiring of a chief information officer to oversee IT. She said he has 15 years’ experience in IT. While he will be working from Pennsylvania, he will be spending one week per month at the hospital to work with staff and become familiar with systems. Later he will cut back the frequency of onsite visits to perhaps once per quarter.

Allen said business is picking up. “We’re starting to see more clinic visits,” she noted. She said orthopedic surgery is getting more procedures and clinics are full when Dr. Tupper comes to Alva.

“There’s been discussion regarding our mammogram machine being down. It’s nearing end of life,” said Allen. “We had spent a chunk of change on it recently, and I think it lasted three months. There are no parts to fix it. Angelica (Brady) is going to pull some numbers so we can do a cost analysis to see what we need to do going forward. So we’re going to be without that service for a little bit.

“We have been in contact with OU to have local service, but there is only one (mobile unit) in Oklahoma and they are booked solid so not the ideal thing. We were looking to see what it would cost to upgrade before it went out of service, and it was looking about $300,000 at that time.”

Allen said she and Brady will check on costs and get back to the board next month.

She said the hospital received their insurance rates for employee health insurance, and as expected they went up. “We’re looking at some different options to be able to weather that storm,” she said. Rates are going up six percent.

Gaisford explained further, “When you have an increase and you have 200 employees, it adds up quick. That will probably be something we need to talk about next month.”

“I don’t think people outside of here understand when a business gets increases like that, you know, cost of everything going up, most other businesses … cost of goods go up. We can raise our prices all we want. We don’t make any more money if we raise our prices. Anyway, it is what it is. We have to figure out how to make all of that work,” said Allen.

“It would be close to $100,000 more a year, just to give you an idea,” added Gaisford.

Geriatric Mental Health Services

Allen provided the trustees with copies of the Psychiatric Medical Care management agreement to establish a geriatric patient focused program. A representative came to the hospital Monday to answer questions. This program would be housed at The Homestead. Allen said a little more investigation is needed.

Gaisford agreed saying, “I believe we need to table it until we get some more information and clarification.”

Dr. Scott Burk asked if the therapist was going to be onsite in Alva or would it be telemedicine. Allen said they would be in Alva once a week.

Clark Housen, CEO of the Okeene hospital and St. Anthony’s representative, said they use the program at Okeene. “So the psychiatrist is off site. Therapists and rehab are on site. A social worker comes on site and performs a therapy session with an individual,” he said.

Burk asked about the age cutoff and was told the program is for age 65 and older. “We have a bigger need for under 65; that’s a bigger need than a geriatric site,” Burk said.

Housen said Okeene hired another therapist for adolescents and adults under age 65. Also he said, “Sometimes they won’t take married couples. If you admit a wife into the program, the husband will not qualify because of a conflict so they have to have another program to go to so I make sure that I have a safety net at Okeene.”

Gaisford asked if Okeene did any type of needs assessment prior to implementing the program. Housen said they used the OSU Office of Rural Health Community Needs Assessment, looking at Blaine County. “We do pickups and drop offs for some of the patients that are not mobile. Referrals come from clinic visits or family members,” he said.

Burk asked about the financial arrangements. He was told Share Medical will pay the company, but Share will bill for the services.

Gaisford said, “We almost can’t lose money in this deal, but we’re going to be capped on what we can make in this program. If you did like what Clark (Housen) did, then you open up other windows of opportunity. I think that’s something going forward to be explored on top of that.”

A motion was approved to table the agreement.

Mission, Vision, Values

“With Dr. Mosburg joining us, we had to update the new board member manual,” said Allen. “In doing that, I couldn’t bring myself to put our old vision statement in it.”

She assigned several department heads to find mission, vision and values statements “that spoke to them.” Then they met to create these statements for the hospital. “I think we’re all very pleased with what we came up with,” she said.

The board was presented the statements for approval. The Mission Statement states “Passion for Excellence, Compassion for You.” Allen said, “We wanted something short and sweet that’s easy to remember. It sort of set the tone for the Vision and the Values because it directed us toward the patient – toward you instead of putting the focus on us. It’s what we’re going to do for the patient.”

The Vision Statement is “Your trusted source for healthcare in Northwest Oklahoma.”

The Values Statement is longer with five parts:

• Gratitude: You make our work possible – thank you for the opportunity to serve you.

• Community: We know you and want to take care of you – what happens to you matters to us.

• Dignity: Your healthcare is personal – we respect your wishes, your privacy, and deliver your care with compassion.

• Diligence: Access to excellent healthcare in Northwest Oklahoma can be challenging – we do not stop working to get you the care and assistance you need.

• Stewardship: Our community needs local healthcare – we make wise use of human, financial, and other resources to ensure we will always be here for you.

The trustees approved the statements.

CFO Report

CFO Angelica Brady gave highlights from the written financial reports for Share Medical Center. She said there was an error on the report showing a negative cash balance. At the end of September the hospital had $65,000 in total cash balances, she said. However, cash balances have been drastically down. “We did go out for a line of credit that we approved last month. We had to draw on that a couple of times for payroll purposes,” she said. The hospital had a net loss of $242,991 for September.

There were two other items under the CFO part of the agenda: opening a checking account and the purchase or lease of a chemistry analyzer.

The new checking account is for the Empower Pharmacy Program for a pay in advance program that wouldn’t be billed through insurance companies. “This would allow us to have the cash right there to purchase the medications. We’d like to keep that revenue separate from everything else,” said Brady.

Allen explained, “We just don’t want to get in a situation where we use the hospital credit card and we want to run that card and it’s maxed out for the day or whatever. Then the medication we ordered could get dropped if we didn’t notice. We just felt like that would be a better option to ensure that the funds are available.”

The new account was approved with the usual people authorized to sign.

On the need for a chemical analyzer in the lab, Gaisford said, “Our current analyzer is seven years old. It’s at the end of its life. We can’t get parts. We have a service agreement on it that is $27,000 a year. Nevertheless, it needs to be replaced. Our options are to purchase one or lease one. If we were to purchase, it’s $195,000 up front, and then in year four you would start having a $24,190 service agreement in years 4 through 7. The lease would be $37,463 a year for the lease which totals up to $262,241 … $12,000 less than the financing option of purchasing one.”

Brady said the hospital will continue to purchase the chemicals needed for the machine. However, the hospital would receive a discount from McKesson on the reagents which would make that less than what the hospital is currently using. The machine lease or purchase is through McKesson.

“In finance (committee) we talked about going through lease,” said Gaisford. “It saves money, and it’s theirs if it craters.” He added that in the last seven years, the hospital did 1.7 million tests on the machine.

Brady said, “85% of our lab tests are run through this machine.” She added that two tests they have been sending out can be done in the hospital lab with the new equipment.

The trustees voted to lease the Quidel Ortho 7600 Chemistry Analyzer from McKesson Medical Surgical.

Share Convalescent Home Report

Share Convalescent Administrator Kelly Parker reported the lowest census of the year during September which meant the lowest gross patient revenue of the year. “All in all, the loss for September was $17,592 which is the best we’ve done in the last four months,” he said.

An item to authorize signatories for an operating account for the nursing home was tabled since it involves Beadles Operations, LLC and that’s not ready to be finalized.

The Homestead Report

Parker reported The Homestead revenue of $55,359 is slightly up. Expenses were $51,434 which left a small net income of almost $4,000.

A lot of work is being done on the building. Parker said they finally got the work done on the sprinkler system for damage incurred almost a year ago. Now the damaged apartments are being renovated so they can be rented again.

Medical Staff

Dr. Burk recommended the appointment to allied staff of Jerry Braziel, PA-C for family and emergency medicine. Burk said he is primarily working in Urgent Care.

The trustees approved his appointment.