WARREN, Ark. – The Bradley County Medical Center Board of Directors met for its monthly meeting on Thursday, July 25 inside the conference room at the hospital with a number of topics covered ranging from improved collections, days in accounts receivable, American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, cybersecurity audit, an award for the emergency room staff, financials, and more.
The minutes from June’s gathering were approved before Controller Matt Pace gave his financial report. Pace stated volumes were mostly consistent from the previous month and BCMC registered a gross patient revenue figure of $4,399,000 with a net operating revenue of $1,827,415. Sales tax revenue was nearly $118,000 to bring the sales tax fund total to $4,598,871.43.
CEO/CFO Leslie Huitt informed the board of some positives that included an increase in cash of $253,393 and a decrease in accounts receivable of $309,927. She attributed this to an improvement in collections and feels like July will represent another step in the right direction.
Additionally, the hospital is making progress towards the goals to be eligible for the remainder of the ARPA funding. She did express some concern that we won’t get the full 12 months to get to those goals and is going to talk to the state about that process with the ARPA funding. She concluded by letting the board know the corrective action plan from the Medicare Survey was approved.
Chief Nursing Officer Jamie Wolfe notified the board of two awards the emergency department recently received from the American Heart Association. They were two Bronze Awards for the Get With The Guidelines program in Coronary Artery Disease STEMI Referring and Rural Coronary Artery Disease STEMI. Wolfe declared how proud he was of the staff for these achievements. Wolfe finished by letting the board know there were six COVID cases in the hospital during June and nine so far in July along with one positive flu.
Chief Operating Officer Leeanna Williams let the board know the CrowdStrike outage didn’t affect BCMC much at all. The only other business she reported was a fire alarm went off on Wednesday, July 24 that was not a drill. Staff acted appropriately and the Warren Fire Department responded. However, there was no fire at the hospital and the alarm was a system error, possibly dealing with a sprinkler.
Other business included the findings from a recent cybersecurity audit that stated there were no major weaknesses or threats, just a few recommendations to improve. The lights in the MRI room are down but should be fixed soon. The MRI machine itself isn’t harmed but requires special lighting in the room to operate. The box for this will cost around $15,000. The hospital is also working to get its second ultrasound machine operational after an influx of ultrasound readings. This machine was at the BCMC Rural Health Clinic and needs $14,000 in repairs. Both items were approved unanimously for the use of sales tax funds.
There were three policy manuals considered for annual approval. They were Swing Bed, Utilization Review, and Employee Health with all three approved unanimously by the board.
After executive session medical staff recommendations were approved and the meeting was adjourned.
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