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Massena Memorial CEO believes admissions will pick back up in March, calls decline a ‘fluke’

Posted 3/20/18

By ANDY GARDNER MASSENA -- A decline in Medicare admissions has driven a year-to-date financial loss at Massena Memorial Hospital but the CEO calls the shortage a temporary "fluke." CFO Pat Facteau …

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Massena Memorial CEO believes admissions will pick back up in March, calls decline a ‘fluke’

Posted

By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- A decline in Medicare admissions has driven a year-to-date financial loss at Massena Memorial Hospital but the CEO calls the shortage a temporary "fluke."

CFO Pat Facteau at Monday's Board of Managers meeting said so far this year, they treated about 51 fewer Medicare cases than over the same time period last year. Those cases typically draw a $10,000 reimbursement, he said.

MMH in February saw a $243,122 loss from operations, which leaves them $304,677 about a half million dollars behind where they were last year.

“We’d be right about where we were last year at this point” if not for the shortage in Medicare cases, Facteau said. “That doesn’t mean we won’t get it back.”

In February, their inpatient discharges, observation visits and outpatient registrations all came in below expectations. CEO Bob Wolleben said this comes despite a nationwide influenza outbreak.

“As we talked about in last month’s meeting, while we had a lot of positive diagnosed (flu cases), those patients were not sick enough to be hospitalized. We’ve looked at referrals to practices and we haven’t noticed any dramatic changes," Wolleben said.

He expects their numbers to rebound.

“Eventually, people get sick,” Wolleben said. “We’re here to take care of them. We believe it was a short term cyclical deviation and we’re watching our volumes this month and they are trending higher … we're anticipating January and February was a bit of a fluke.”

Although emergency numbers were among those that have dipped so far this year, Wolleben said March's numbers so far show emergency department visits are starting to come back around.

“We’re down 180 registrations out of the ER, 85 percent to 90 percent of admissions come from the ER," Facteau said, referring to the 2,572 emergency visits they had year-to-date, compared to the 2,750 the same time last year.

“Through the first 19 days of March, we’re already 110 visits over the prior year, so we’re going to make up some ground," Wolleben said. “Emergency room visits, a certain percentage of them turn into admissions.”