PMC continues to show profits at midway point of FY 2017
Matt Gorman also says a construction project for a therapy gym is complete, and the focus will shift to an activities space.
Polk Medical Center is still seeing better than expected profits for the year, and projects are nearing completion as February came to a close and March got underway.
The monthly meeting of t he Cedartown- Polk County Hospital Authority saw Hospital Administrator Matt Gorman reporting an increase of numbers from the month of January in those seeking inpatient care and emergency room visits as flu and allergy season got fully underway locally.
Before f i gures had wrapped up f or t he month, Polk Medical Center had a monthly total of 66 patients in inpatient care, and 38 swing bed admissions for the month of January for those staying overnight, and 2,316 patients total for the month previous coming i nto t he hospital f or emergency care.
Gorman said that those figures were staying on track as flu and allergy season continued into February, telling board members to expect numbers to remain around the same or grow slightly in a few categories.
“February has been a very busy month,” he said.
The number of surgical cases and procedures at Polk Medical Center continues to fluctuate as administrators continue to seek out potential new surgeons to use the facility, Gorman said. Only three procedures were done in the month of January at the hospital, compared to 14 in December 2016.
With figures for inpatient care continuing to grow, Gorman said the hospital is now positioned to be able to handle those numbers as far as providing physical therapy is concerned. The new therapy gym space was finished up in February and is now being used by patients, he said.
It shifts focus for the next few weeks on remodeling of the old gym space into a new activities space, which Gorman said the hospital hopes to utilize in the near future to expand what is available for patients to do together.
“We’re excited to have more space available for our patients to come together for activities,” he said.
The ultimate idea, Gorman said, is for patients to spend more time together as part of the healing process, doing everything from arts and crafts to simply having a space where i npatient and swing bed patients can come together for meals.
Ensuring all this runs well continues to come down to strong financial performances year to year, and Polk Medical Center remains on track to keep that trend up.
This continues to translate to annual profits for the hospital to the tune of $3.8 million so far for FY 2017, some $ 1.6 million above the number that Clarice Cable said was anticipated for the annual budget.
That was despite an increase in spending at the hospital, Cable reported.
Hospital spending went up 23 percent, with $1.7 million extra above the budget this point spent instead of $1.3 million accounted for in initial planning, a difference of more than $325,000 overall. The overall budgeted figure was $12.5 million in expenses thus far for the year, compared to the just shy over $13 million spent to this point in actual costs.
Revenues have been much higher than expected for the year too and helping offset the expenses, with $18 million having come in after bad debts compared to $ 16 million budgeted, or a 15 percent increase for FY 2017 up to the end of January.