The August meeting of the Drew Memorial Health Systems Board of Directors was held on Monday, August 28. The meeting was called to order shortly after 12:30 p.m. with all board members except for Lagarian Cross present. Quality and Credentials and July’s minutes were approved by the board members.
DMHS Chief Executive Officer, Scott Barrilleaux gave his CEO’s report to the board. Barrilleaux said that recently DMHS had been dealing with three hurdles that they had to deal with in order to move forward the management agreement and sublease agreement with Baptist Health.
The first of these hurdles was getting approval to change the language in the sublease agreement from the United States Department of Agriculture, who is the lien-holder for DMH. Barrilleaux stated that he has received word that the USDA has approved this. The second hurdle deals with the settlement with Cerner. Barrilleaux said that a resolution is closer now, and that there have been several offers and counteroffers sent back and forth. He feels like DMHS is in a good spot right now, and that both parties should reach an agreement fairly soon. The final hurdle deals with the Employee Retention Tax Credit. Barrilleaux said that they have been waiting to get a response from the firm that submitted their documentation, and how they got the documents that were submitted to the Internal Revenue Service. They want to know what their logic behind the fact that DMHS should have and did qualify for a return. Barrilleaux said that the response came via memorandum a couple of days before this meeting.
“I think this memorandum will put to rest some of the concerns in our eventual merger with Baptist,” Barrilleaux said. “It has been passed along to them, and we are awaiting their response. It also will be sent to the auditor who initially voiced his concerns.”
Barrilleaux also mentioned that there has been a small spike in COVID cases. He said that it has started to impact the hospital staff, and that hopefully this is the worst of it.
“In the month of July, we saw a bit of a loss, but for the year we are showing a positive bottom line of $4.6 million,” said DMHS Chief Financial Officer Melodie Colwell during her financial report for the month of July.
Colwell added that there was a cash decrease in July of almost $840,000. This was in part due to cash collections being lower than projected. These numbers are lower than projected because of the case mix being down, and a lower daily census. Salaries were over budget due to several in-house contracts. Utilities continued to be over budget due to higher utilization and higher rates. Leases and rentals were also over budget due to entering into a new agreement that wasn’t initially budgeted for. Colwell added that despite these areas exceeding budget, overall the hospital was under budget by $57,000 in July.
With no further business, the meeting was adjourned until the next meeting which will be held on September 25.
