PMH seeking board candidates

Marlinton, W.Va. – During the monthly Pocahontas Memorial Hospital board meeting on June 28, chief financial officer Chad Carpenter had some good news – fewer people needed an overnight hospital stay than in the last three years.

“Inpatient revenue was down, $279, 613,” he said. “That’s result of not having a high census. We only had 93 patient days for the month, which is probably the lowest that we’ve had in three years that I’ve actually been tracking all this.”

Of course, less patient days means less revenue for PMH. The hospital lost about $66,000 in May, but still shows a $64,000 profit for the year.

Carpenter explains why the salary budget has increased.

“Salaries and wages were higher than what they had been running, but did add two physicians and a PRN pharmacist, at the time, for that month,” he said. “Plus, you have a holiday in there – that’s going to cause you to have a higher payroll.”

Board chairman Dr. Robert Must says, all things considered, he’s happy with the numbers.

“Well, we had a low census month, but, the financial report is remarkably good considering the loss of revenue on the inpatient side,” he said.

Must says the hospital is looking for candidates to serve on the hospital board.

“Two of our board members have expiring terms,” he said. “That would be Dan Lewis and Janet Ghigo. People who have expiring appointments have to re-apply. I don’t believe that’s happened in the past, but it’s a more professional approach and we’re going to do that. Dan is retiring from the board and Janet is going to re-apply.”

The chairman says Lewis brought expertise to the table.

“Dan is not here, unfortunately,” he said. “We won’t see him here anymore and I’d like to say something on his behalf. He brought some real expertise. I was very happy to have Dan. He understands the business of hospitals and made some very good suggestions.”

Anyone interested in serving on the county-owned hospital board should call 304-799-7400.

Chief operations officer Teresa Wagner tells the board a major new piece of equipment has been installed.

“I’d like to report on radiology this month,” she said. “They have completed the installation and the training of the new CT scanner,” she said. “It’s a 16-slice. It’s now in operation. It’s working well and all the staff have been trained on it.”

Radiology technician Yvette Rider describes why the new 16-slice CT scanner is better than the old one.

“This one is an upgrade,” she said. “That one was a four-slice. This one is a 16-slice. It’s much quicker and you can have 3-D reconstructions on all body parts. 3-D is like, if you were doing a knee, the radiologist is able to look at it at different angles, different views of the knee.”

“We can look for pulmonary embolisms, which is blood clots in the lungs,” Rider added. “We can look for bleeds that are in the abdomen – if there was a car wreck – brain cancer, brain aneurysms.”

In other business, the PMH board:

– approved a $15.4 million budget for FY2012-2013;
– approved a $100,000 expenditure for employee incentive payments;
– hired the Fidelis firm to recruit physicians;
– renewed an agreement with the American Red Cross for blood products, and;
– changed the organizational credit card account to Pendleton Community Bank.
The next regular PMH board meeting is scheduled for July 26 at 7 p.m.