Hospital board welcomes Kay

At the November Hot Springs Health Hospital Board meeting, Chairman Bill Williams welcomed Aimee Kay to the board. Also, CEO Scott Alwin presented a plaque in recognition of out-going Vice Chairman Heath Overfield.

A discussion was held about the recent Service Excellence Conference in Orlando, Florida that some staff attended.

In the medical staff report, Dr. Mattson Mathey said the providers are working to get a uniform formalized process in place for their utilization and documentation for their observations. This will help them with their billing processes. Also, they are working on clarifying the follow-up process for the weekend and overnight ER visits. 

In the financial report, CFO Kevin Benson said their days in accounts receivable have been higher than their goal for quite some time. Benson added, “We were able to fill a couple of key positions, and we’re going to be getting our revenue cycle team together to really focus on the revenue cycle and see if we can get that reduced and increase cash flow as well.”

Chris Dillon and Dave Studebaker of Eide Bailly presented the hospital’s audit of the 2022 fiscal year. They are a new audit firm for the hospital. For their draft report, they provided three opinions. One is over the financial statements. The second is over internal controls with financial reporting. The third is for compliance with federal requirements and is a single-audit opinion. The single-audit opinion is related to the USDA, the community facilities debt. They said the audit “went very smoothly.” They also said, “I would like to take credit for an audit very well, but it really has nothing to do with us. It’s management, the finance team, Kevin Benson, Natalia Keller, and the folks that are working with them that really make it go well.”

CEO Scott Alwin recognized Verlene Luna who earned the American College of HealthCare Executives Service Award. Alwin also said he met with the account manager for Survey Solution while he was in Florida. Survey Solution is their current vendor that performs patient satisfaction surveys. Alwin has been doing research and homework for other vendor opportunities and will have a Zoom call to continue his investigation, and there is more to come on that matter. 

Alwin also reported that he signed an agreement with Western Sleep Medicine, which is a sleep study agency based out of Scottsbluff, Nebraska. They have a variety of agreements with hospitals across the whole state. Alwin said that approximately in February or March, their technician can start in-house sleep studies again. 

For the quality report, Nina Landis said that “patients readmitted to the hospital went down just a little bit for October and that returns to the E.R. when up just a little. We’re still just shy of our goal in both of those categories.”

For the compliance report, CCO Dan Hemann said they are doing some minor restructuring of their compliance program. Hemann will transition to the chief compliance officer and be part of senior leadership. This was based on the recommendation for their Health Tech Survey. Second, they are looking to implement a compliance committee in 2023. Hemann added that his top priorities will include education for directions and getting them involved. 

In new business, Linda Veylupek of human resources presented the insurance renewal package from Montana Network. 

The board voted and passed the approval of their health insurance renewals for the Montana Health Network and the principal insurance as presented. 

The board decided that the next meeting will be on December 27.

For the election of officers, the votes resulted in Dr. Bill Williams as Chairman, Melissa Johnson as Vice-Chair, and Dave Koerwitz as Treasurer. 

The board also signed new confidentiality and conflict of interest statements.