Meetings watch: Roosevelt General Hospital

The following were actions taken Tuesday at the Roosevelt General Hospital Board meeting:

• Board members approved accreditation for a credential one position for Dr. Sanjay Vasudeva by RGH Chief of Staff Dr. Praveen Chava.

“He’s a board certified emergency physician. He started working recently in emergency rooms. His data bank is clear, his references are superior,” said Chava.

• Board members approved both the March 2016 financial statement and the submission of the hospital’s budget.

According to Chief Financial Officer Eva Stevens, gross patient revenue was 15 percent higher than the monthly average.

Over $2 million in bad debt has been written off, thanks in part, Stevens said, to the fact that they began declaring all of the debt to their collection agency.

“Writing off that huge amount didn’t hurt us, because it came out of our reserves. Not only that, but it’s going to be less on our normal reserves. We actually didn’t show too much bad debt at all, even though we were ‘robbed’ of $2 million," she said, referencing the issue of hospitals allegedly being underpaid by medical companies and medical insurance agencies, “which are coming up with more and more ways to pay hospitals less.”

"At the end of the day, we’re looking at only 6 percent of our operating margin from our monthly average,” she said.

According to Stevens, the net operating margin for March was $38,000 with a net income of $180,000.

• Chief Nursing Officer Mercedes Lopez said in the clinical services report that the facility did well on recent accreditation surveys.

“We actually did very well. I was proud of what we’re doing here. They actually came in, and they were here for four days. Nothing that they found isn’t something that we took seriously and haven’t already fixed,” Lopez said.

She presented trending which showed that no patient has gotten an infection while staying in the facility. The report also found that medication management was also going well, she said.

The clinic’s lab, she said, has changed their criteria and has begun focusing on sepsis by analyzing lactic acid.

“CNS (Center for Medicare Services) would like us to focus on sepsis this year. It’s a diagnosis. They come in and they’ve got fever, they’re blood pressure is dropping, and it could be systemic. They would like us to focus in on how quickly we’re treating that and managing that sepsis within the patient,” Lopez said. “The lactic acid is a lab that goes to get done, and it tells how bad the sepsis is. It can help us trend, ‘Are we treating it appropriately? Do we need to give them more fluid?’ That’s how we look at lactic acid.”

• In the clinic report, Clinic Administrator Tina Hill said that the facility is currently live on its lab interface, bringing up three providers at a time.

Hill also said that the clinic recently hired a weekend nurse practitioner, as well as negotiating with a candidate on a part-time position at the Melrose clinic.

• In the administrative report, Chief Executive Officer Dr. Larry Leaming said that the hospital is still looking for candidates interested in a chief financial officer position. He mentioned that job boards will continue to be used to attract interested parties, but if there is no response, the administration “will likely engage a recruiting firm to help us with this, because it’s pretty highly specialized.”

— Compiled by Staff Writer Eamon Scarbrough