HCHC, Great River sorting financial, operational details

A month and a half into the Henry County Health Center’s lease with Great River Health Systems, officials are still working on some parts of the transition.

HCHC Chief Financial Officer Dave Muhs told the Board of Trustees Wednesday that it will take time to work out all of the financial changes.

“We continue to go through the pulling apart of the two organizations,” Muhs said. “All of our process and workflows have changed dramatically.

“Things are fine, it just takes time to work through it all and get it correct.”

The lease, which went into effect July 1, has Great River leasing the hospital and its employees from HCHC.

However, Emergency Medical Services are not included in the lease. HCHC will continue to operate the EMS service.

That fact has made the changeover complicated, according to Muhs.

“We had to re-credential and rebill because of all the new billing numbers,” he said. “The ambulance was always intermingled with the hospital, so I’ve got to work that out.”

He said he has had to pull some funds from the HCHC reserves because EMS has no income yet.

“That’s going to go on for months,” Muhs said. “We had to change all the billing numbers, and that’s going to take some time.”

As part of the lease agreement, Great River will subsidize HCHC EMS shortfalls up to $1.68 million over five years.

The agreement came after several years of HCHC searching for a solution to financial shortfalls in EMS.

HCHC and Great River are still working on getting other financial aspects ironed out as well.

“We were still making financial transactions between the two organizations as of yesterday (Tuesday),” Muhs said. “Not everything is complete yet. It takes time to go through all this.”

The lease also calls for HCHC to use tax revenue it collects to repair and replace hospital assets when needed.

Muhs said that they are working on a draft on how to handle unexpected capital expenditures.

This year, HCHC has $1.2 million budgeted for capital projects, and Muhs said that includes about $100,000 for contingencies.

“It’s in the lease how to handle that, but we just have to operationalize it,” he said.