HOSPITAL CORNER

We would like to talk money in this week's update. We have heard some confusion and frustration about why we would still need the levy since we have received so much grant money.

To start, we want to give our appreciation to everyone who participated in the April election. The special levy that was passed in April is to fund our regular maintenance and operation costs. The Hospital District regularly operates in the red with losses of around $500,000 for 2019 alone. We are dependent on tax support to make up for those operational deficits and those losses can be attributed to a few things. Our costs are relatively fixed in order to maintain all of our current services. Any cuts that would have a significant impact on our income would also have a substantial impact on the ability to provide services. We are also reimbursed by Medicare based on our costs. Cutting certain costs will result in cutting our reimbursement. We continue to look for ways to increase revenue and decrease our burden on the community tax payers.

One of the big projects we are working on right now is to bring the 1940 hospital building up to current electrical codes with sufficient capacity to handle increased load. We then need to add adequate, energy efficient cooling to replace the swamp coolers that are currently in use. Finally, we hope to be able to add CT scanning. Not only would this provide a much-needed service to the community but it would help improve our revenue.

We have received one grant through the Washington Department of Commerce which will allow us to complete phase one of the project. We have applied for $725,000 worth of grants from four other grant foundations to help fund the other portions of this project. These are expenses that go above and beyond the expenses covered by the levy. At this point, we have no plan to use any of the District's money to pay for this project.

Health care systems across the country have been impacted by COVID-19, some of them very severely. In response the federal government has given out grant funding to large hospitals who have had high volumes of COVID-19 patients and to rural hospitals. We have been the recipient of many of these grants mostly, without even having to apply.

We did apply and received an advanced payment from Medicare but that is a loan and will be paid back out of our Medicare reimbursement. We also applied for and received a payroll protection loan through the Small Business Association. This is to help offset our staffing cost during this time when our patient volumes are decreased. The remainder of the grants were intended to offset financial losses we may experience due to shut downs related to COVID-19.

We have seen and will likely continue to see decreased patient volumes that have/will impact our revenues. The grants we have received will offset that lost revenue. It is likely that any money we can't justify as lost revenue will have to be paid back. At the end of all of this, we will likely be in the same position we were when we asked for the special levy.

We are doing our best to be fiscally responsible and do not want to be a burden on the community. We hope we can keep all of the grant money which would allow us to operate longer without asking for more tax support. We are continuing to explore avenues for improved revenue.