New Pinckneyville Hospital Services Will Save Patients Driving Time
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[A combination of decreased revenue and increased expenses resulted in an operating loss of $160,830 and a net loss of $132,728 for May 2011. The current fiscal year began May 1 for Pinckneyville Community Hospital.
Hospital Administrator Tom Hudgins said employee health insurance was over budget, as were some other expenses.
PCH is planning to offer additional services to the community over the next few months. The new digital mammography equipment has arrived; installation will begin next week.
An open house is planned for 6 p.m. on July 18 to introduce the new digital mammography services to the public. The radiology group under contract to PCH has agreed to immediately read all scheduled diagnostic mammograms and discuss them with patients. The new service will save driving time and offer immediate results.
Hudgins is hoping to have a radiologist speak at the open house.
PCH is also beginning a senior care program geared toward Medicare-age patients. The new counseling and behavioral health program will be housed in the ground floor of the former VNA-TIP office north of SIR fitness.
Similar programs have been very successful in Benton, McLeansboro, Eldorado and Metropolis.
Senior Care will open after the building is renovated.
In other business, the board:
heard that a power surge caused several systems outages on June 20. The computer systems in the hospital, lab and Family Medical Center were offline, as well as the CT scanner, nuclear medicine ultrasound equipment and the firewall between the hospital and their internet provider and its network interface card. By the end of the day, all of the systems were back online, except for the CT scanner, which had a damaged tube. A new tube was received overnight. Hudgins said staff responded well to the problems. Information is being gathered and sent to the hospital's insurance carrier.
heard that PCH has received a grant for an assessment under the rural hospital performance improvement program. The assessment will begin in October and will address quality and customer service, growth, staff development and financial performance. The results should be available in early 2012. There will be no out-of-pocket expenses for the assessment. This is the second rural health grant PCH has received. The first covered the surveys being mailed this month.
heard that the second night of sports physicals is scheduled for July 13 at Pinckneyville High School.
authorized Hudgins to deal with an air transportation bill. A patient was transferred using ARCH. However, the patient was an Air Evac member. Air Evac does not cover the full cost ARCH transports at this time. The staff has since been told to ask about Air Evac membership and to offer a choice in air transports to patients.