Flu visits affect hospital funds

MASSENA — A brisk flu season is just one of the reasons Massena Memorial Hospital's bottom line is not as robust as the hospital's board would like to see.

Thanks in part to patients seeking treatment related to both seasonal flu and the H1N1 virus, the hospital ended October with a loss of nearly $170,000, according to a report released Monday.

The hospital board had budgeted a gain of almost $300,000 for the month.

"ER visits have been creeping up and up and up," Chief Financial Officer Kelley M. Tiernan said. "We're trying to analyze internally if that's expected to continue."

The hospital pays an outside company to manage its emergency room, which is paid per visit regardless of a patient's ability to pay. So when the hospital does not recoup the entire bill, it still has to pay for full coverage of the ER. Things can get expensive when uninsured patients, or those who cannot afford their co-pays, go to the ER, officials said.

So far this year, the hospital is operating in the black by about $700,000. It's a far cry from the $2 million the board was expecting, but administrators said they are content with this year's finances.

"It's very positive compared to what you see across the north country," Ms. Tiernan said. "We're pleased that it's still in the black."

There have been several months so far this year that the hospital's finances have not been as strong as expected under the 2009 budget. Road construction around the hospital, physician vacations and a healthy summer, thus fewer doctor visits, were part of the reason in the spring and summer.

This fall, a high number of visits to the emergency room, vacant positions and high employee health care costs are hurting the hospital's coffers.

Though ER visits have been on the rise for months, many of those visits in October were because of the flu, hospital Chief Executive Officer Charles F. Fahd II said.

"We had 1,800 patients in the ER," he said, "which is the highest number we've seen in almost 13 years that I've been here."

In an average month, the hospital sees about 1,500 people in the ER for treatment, according to Mr. Fahd.

The number of patients who cannot afford their medical bills also seems to be on the rise, and the hospital wrote off about $170,000 in October in bad debt.

"We're seeing more people that aren't paying," Ms. Tiernan said. "We're kind of chalking it up to the economy. It's another sign of what the community has been through."