Polk Medical Center financials "best performance in state" for FY 2016
Polk Medical Center is keeping the bottom line in mind, and based on an audit report from the firm Draffin and Tucker, the financials look just fine for 2016.
They submitted an unmodified opinion of the financial numbers for the hospital for FY 2016, which started in July 2015 and came to a close last summer.
Bert Bennett, who presented the report to the Cedartown-Polk County Hospital Authority during their October session, said Polk Medical Center's books gave a good look at how the facility is doing after being in the new hospital for a full year.
The hospital posted $5.4 million in earnings once income and liabilities were tallied together, but that number is slightly inflated according to Bennett. He said that without $3 million in write-offs on services provided by Floyd Healthcare Management, Inc. who runs Polk
Medical Center, the facility would have posted only a $2.4 million profit for the year.
"When we prepared the cost report, there's an excess of $3 million that Polk gets to take credit for on cost reports, but Floyd doesn't charge back. So what that means is there's at least $3 million in costs that if Polk stood alone, they'd have to write a check or pay for that," he said. "So if you look at this hospital standing alone, that $5 million is a little bit higher number. But when you look at the commitment that Floyd has made to cover that $3 million, even without it the profits would still be $2 million."
Despite the savings, Bennett said the hospital has to be one of the best rural facilities he's seen operating within the state.
"The performance very much exceeds most hospitals that we've seen, certainly small critical access rural hospitals," Bennett said. "We're seeing critical access hospitals that are standing alone and barely breaking even. I think you need tha infrastructure to really be successful."
He added that the payer mix is better at Polk Medical Center than other facilities he's worked on audits for, allowing for some flexibility for the hospital to gain earnings in a variety of ways.
For instance, Bennett pointed to Polk Medical Center's swing bed program as an excellent benefit to the hospital's revenue stream, calling it a "difference maker today compared to what was seen four or five years ago."
"I dare say this is best performance in the state of Georgia, certainly based on these financial statements," he said, even if Polk Medical Center could only claim the $2.4 million in profits, and not the full $5.4 million on the books.
FY 2016 saw Polk Medical Center take in $27 million in assets, and used some $22 million in expenses. Some $12 million of that is held as a provision for bad debts in that $27 million in assets.
That compares to the fiscal year the hospital moved, when it took in some $24 million in revenue and had $14 million in expenses. $7 million was written off in bad debt in FY 2015 as compared to this past fiscal year's $5 million increase.
As of the October meeting, financials were reported through the first quarter for FY 2017. Right now, the hospital is claiming $1.8 million in earnings off of $7 million in revenue and more than $5 million in expenses.
Some of that money is also tied up in bad debt since actual earnings are much higher at nearly $28 million, but around $18 million of that is money deducted from overall operating expenses.
Despite this, according to Clarice Cable, the hospital financially is performing 125 percent above what was budgeted for the year following the first quarter.
Accountants expected only around $819,000 in profit at the end of
September.
Gym project moving forward with Brassfield and Gorrie
Contractors will be coming back to Polk Medical Center in the coming weeks as they plan to rework several areas of the hospital to make it more useful for patients.
As swing bed admissions continue to rise with patients requiring rehabilitation services, hospital administrator Matt Gorman said the organization is moving forward with the next step in remodeling plans.
The administration offices were moved following a buildout of the last of the offices in the Medical Office Building area turned into a conference room and space for Gorman and other administrators.
Now that their former offices are being taken up by hospital education team members, Gorman said Polk Medical Center can move onto expanding the therapy gym.
Brassfield and Gorrie were chosen to complete the work on a bid of $246,000 during the hospital authority's September session, and they are set to go to work before the end of the year on transforming the space.
Along with extending the space of the gym into surrounding offices once used by the hospital education team, it will include private areas for one on one auditory and speech therapy, occupational therpay area with appliances commonly used in the home, and office space for staff as well.
Work is not expected to take more than a few months, Gorman reported.