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Greater Regional Health held a special meeting with U.S. Senator Charles Grassley Friday at the Roundhouse.
During the meeting, GRH officials shared with Grassley that it was named a Top 100 Critical Access Hospital consecutively four years, by Chartis Health Group, which it’s received seven times. They also shared with Grassley their efforts to combat COVID-19 with relief funding, and department growth and expansion.
“Loans were used to avoid layoffs and to keep staffing stable, provider relief funds totaled 6 million.” said Chief Financial Officer Matt McCutchan.
Briefly finances and allocations of funds needed for department areas, supplies, and projects, were reviewed by the CFO. Some of the allocated funds were associated to GRH’s provider and equipment loan funds.
“Funds were allocated to equipment, ventilators, sterilizers, isolation rooms, staffing and testing,” said McCutchan.
McCutchan acknowledged the appreciation of the funds as, “They were instrumental in helping GRH weather the storm over the last couple years.”
In addition, the PPP loan or provider funds and COVID relief funds allowed for GRH to give $1 million in raises which was an investment back into there dedicated staff members.
“Since it was one time money, or repeated a couple times it’s not something that is going to go on forever. Do your employees’ see that, and do you treat it as a bonus or raise that will have to be repeated from other income in the future?” asked Senator Grassley.
Neitzel confirmed that the first round did involve bonuses. However, second approach was gauged more towards wages.
“We have to increase our base salary to be competitive, we don’t want to see our nurses or personnel leave to become travelers, so it’s necessary that we be competitive in wages to keep staff,” said Neitzel.
340B Contracts
CEO Neitzel and talked about 340B contracts, a program, which offers eligible safety net health care providers access to low-cost medications, which allows them to expand the type and volume of care they provide to the most vulnerable patient populations.
“Manufacturers are getting a lot more competitive and actually pulled the ability to utilize 340B contract for critical access hospitals, such as GRH,” said Neitzel.
Neitzel attended a meeting about 340B contracts prior to Friday’s special meeting.
“We’ve seen a 30% decline in our 340B revenue, which went from about $2.2 million annually to about $1.5 million,” he said.
The revenue that stands at approximately $1.5 million is used in relation to uncompensated care provided, totaling $2.5 million, which is 2% of GRH charges and uninsured discounts, which totals approximately $700,000, .5% of GRH charges.
“What we want to do is make sure that GRH maintains the vitality and the viability of the 340B programs, but at the same time we want to be good stewards when we receive that by asking ourselves ‘How do we reinvest that back into the community and the patients we serve?’” said Neitzel.
Grassley, said the 340B contracts have been a topic of discussion in Congress.
“By circumventing those funds by having our own retail pharmacy, we’d hurt other businesses in town,” said Neitzel.
Neitzel said GRH has great relationships with pharmacies in town such as Hy-Vee, Medicap and Walmart. In addition, GRH has relations with Lenox Pharmacy and other rural health clinics and pharmacies. GRH looks to find an avenue that maintains viability but makes sure that the manufactures honor the intent of the legislation.
“I don’t think that were giving up either, through what we can do through the administration,” said Grassley.
There is an open court case associated to the topic of the 340B contracts. With the case under review there is no definitive answer at this point in time, until administration is able to close on the case.
“One hundred and twenty days to six months at the most,” said Grassley.
Legislators are still discussing 340B contracts on the Senate floor.
OB Desert
“We’ve been through the ringer here the last five years,” said Chief of Nursing Amanda Moore.
After attending a conference in Iowa City, Moore learned that any obstetrics unit not delivering at least 80 babies a year won’t qualify to keep their doors open based on income coming in.
“So we combatted, by investing in our community hospital OB. We brought in an OB gynecologist, an addition of a couple nurse practitioners, and continue in efforts to recruit more individuals for GRH’s OB unit,” said Moore.
GRH has absorbed patients with an hour radius due to OB clinics in surrounding areas not able to keep OB units open. GRH is picking up more Corning patients after the closure of the Red Oak obstetrics department.
“We’ve created a contract with Laerdal Medical, they will come in and we’ll do simulations with our staff, to promote always thinking outside the box to keep our staff ahead and prepared,” said Moore.
GRH’s contract with Laerdal Medical and their educational services are on-site simulation trainings for the extent of 2022, for obstetrics and other departments of GRH in the efforts to increase skill and knowledge for their employees.
“Our goals are in motion as we recruited a midwife, we have a family practice/OB along with our OB/GYN unit. We want to give Mothers a choice when it come to choosing their child’s delivery,” said Neitzel.
GRH Projects
In regards to other projects that GRH is working towards include, continuance with the implementation of distance learning and telemedicine, that will be funding through contributions from GRH approved Feb. 28 board meeting in combination with a USDA grant approval.
Discussion also included movement with project towards providing a daycare center related to feedback GRH had received from a survey sent to employees, in efforts to satisfy employee desires. GRH has begun forming a plan of execution. Concepts associated to adequate staffing were acknowledged, GRH needing further lengths of discussion to secure more out look for staffing and other obligations associated to the daycare project.
Grassley offered to have his administration compose letters of support for future GRH projects and grant funding.
“Having the accessibility to the Senator was an outstanding opportunity for Greater Regional Health,” said Neitzel. It was great to have that reciprocity coming back from the Senator today.”