NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson Regional Healthcare System Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President Duane Miller said the hospital needs to hire more local employees to improve its finances.
"Three years ago, before COVID, the hospital spent about $1 to $1.25 million in traveler cost," Miller said. "At one point, it grew to $2 million. The board said, what are you going to do to bring that down? We were working on that. Now, after the pandemic, we are spending $18 million a year in traveler costs. The numbers are phenomenal. Providing incentives and working with our area colleges in working on recruiting and retaining employees that you have is one of the keys as we move forward for our success."
Getting more patients in at the beginning of their medical journey through family practice is a key to increasing overall revenue.
"When you mention Dr. Johnson and the four practitioners she's recently hired and their support of primary care, to provide access to patients, that's the other piece of that," Miller said. "That will improve our volumes and also reduce that $100 million that leaves the community each year. We're trying to bring in another $10 to $20 million by changing access patterns and referral patterns. We believe that will occur."
Medicaid expansion also would help the hospital, but even if that doesn't happen, there is still some key reimbursement the hospital is missing out on since not enough Medicaid patients use them.
"We have about a 15% Medicaid population in this community," Miller said. "While we have a 15% Medicaid population, we only have about 4% of it that ends up as an inpatient for services. That's something that we're trying to understand better as we go forward. Often, an indigent patient or a Medicaid patient may not be able to get the specialty care they need in order to get the transfer to the hospital for that inpatient care. Working through to understand that is something that the hospital is trying to do. It has far-reaching implications. If the hospital were to see only half of our Medicaid, we'd qualify for other federal support in our pharmaceutical costs, that would reduce our pharmaceutical costs nearly 80%. Because we're not seeing that level of indigent care on the inpatient side, we're not able to do that."
Miller said the hospital writes off 6% of its net revenues for indigent care and bad debt.