The County-owned Geary Community Hospital (GCH) is operating at a fairly “even keel” at this time.
Ben Bennett, County Commissioner, reported during a weekly Commission meeting that the hospital was struggling.
“We’re going to have to make some cuts and some of our expenditures,” said Bennett. “We are looking at the fact that we may have to do a reduction in staffing – and nobody really wants that, but we may have to do it in order to stay solvent in the near future.”
JC Post contacted Geary Community Hospital CEO Dr. Joseph Stratton for his comments on the issue; while Stratton didn’t disagree with the Commissioner, he made clear that there is no formal plan to reduce staffing at this time.
“I think when we look at this year’s budget, we’re going to continue to cut costs where we can within reason and better control expenses – that could have anything to do with medical supplies, any travel and education and other supply costs; of course you have to look at the personnel side of things as well,” said Stratton. “We have no formal plan at this time to do a reduction of force or layoffs; before we’d get to that [point] we’d try to do whatever we could through attrition with employees through retirement and maybe not filling positions here and there.”
Earlier indications from the Hospital have been that there could be reductions in costs such as supplies; Stratton noted that every proposal/solution is on the table for discussion.
“Some of these things are kind of slow moving and things that we’ve been working on in terms of better controlling our supply cost and looking at our contracts that we have with the companies that are payers through insurance companies – whether it’s Aetna or Blue Cross and Blue Shield – and examining what we’re getting paid and maybe renegotiating some of those agreements,” said Stratton.
It was reported last month, that GCH was losing approximately $1 million annually due to the lack of Medicaid expansion. Bennett, has been vocal in recent months about the problems the local hospital faces.
No final actions have been taken at Geary Community Hospital at this point.