Polk Hospital Autority to keep same members for 2016

The Cedartown-Polk County Hospital Authority board, which oversees the operations and budget for Polk Medical Center, reappointed its board during the final session of the fiscal year in late June.

Seven of the eight members of the board are from Polk County, ncluding Richard Jewell, who was appointed as an at-large member. The board members were nominated and approved by Floyd Medical Center, Inc., as part of the bylaws of the hospital authority.

Board Chair and CEO of Floyd Medical Center, Kurt Stuenke, from Floyd County, was also reappointed.

Harold Wyatt Jr., Larry Kuglar, Frank Shelley,

Bruce Casey, Lee Cummings, and Darroll Freeman were all given new terms on the board. The resolution to reappoint was a matter of routine, Wade Monk, general counsel for Floyd Medical Center, told board members.

Monk also updated board members at the end of the meeting about ongoing negotiations with Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Georgia to bring BCBS coverage to patients at Polk Medical Center.

Monk said Floyd Medical Center and BCBS have exchanged proposals and counter-proposals, but have not been able to agree on payments from the insurance company to the hospital.

“They promised to send a new proposal, and we analyzed it with our revenue management people,” he said. “It doesn’t appear to be an improvement over earlier proposals that have been exchanged with Floyd in the past.”

Simply put, Monk said Floyd Medical Center will not accept any deal with BCBS that would pay the hospital less than the amount needed to cover expenses of treatment. “This is in the foremost of our mind,” he said. “We want to get this community a contract.”

Board members also approved a new budget for the 2015-16 fiscal year before approving new terms for themselves in the June session. Though the hospital will not see the big profits experienced over the past months after the move to the new Polk Medical Center, it still is expected to end the year with $20 million in revenue over expenses, since numbers were initially budgeted based off of experience at the previous facility now being used as One Door Polk.

“This is the best year we’ve ever had,” said Clarice Cable, director of accounting for Floyd Medical Center. “It’s one of those things you just don’t expect to happen again. We’re still being aggressive with our budgeting, but we want to be conservative and realistic about what to expect.”

She told board members the total revenue for the facility would be somewhere around $386 million for 2016, with $374 million of that spent on expenses.

The final numbers for 2015 show the hospital took in $367 million and ended the year spending $345 million in operations, payroll, equipment and other areas.

All told, the Hospital Authority ended the year with $30 million more than expected.

The 2016 budget projects a 33 percent decrease in the expected ending balance of $20 million after accounting for expenditures and revenues