Memorial Hospital of Texas County is seeing progress, per reports of staff and administration as Synergic Resource Partners Guymon LLC (SRP Guymon) continues to move forward with work to improve patient care and services at the facility. This week, the Board of Trustees heard from COO Mike Carter, financial advisor Mike Mullins and CCO Kenda Pritchard, who shared updates.
Negotiations have started with those vendors in an effort to save the hospital money in terms of penalties and late fees.
“All of our critical vendors in daily operations are handled. We’re getting those paid. We made progress on a lot of vendors. We’ve been able to pay down close to $75,000 and past due debt on top of our current items,” Mullins continued. “In the last 60 days we’ve made some progress with some new vendors, restructuring some of the relationships we have so we can get some better pricing.”
In the past, Carter advised the board that in several cases, the hospital may have been overpaying for supplies and was not engaged in competitive, financially advantageous contracts. Those contracts are now being renegotiated to garner better pricing for the facility.
Mullins reported work is also being done with billing, accounting and the supply ordering process to make vendor orders, payments and delivery faster.
Board Chair Harold Tyson expressed a positive outlook on those efforts, hoping to hire locally instead. Mullins responded to Tyson, noting that in January he and Pritchard worked a program and launched in February in which all clinical staff were given raises based on certain criteria.
Mullins stated to the board that he is fiscally operating on the focus of getting the hospital’s debts paid off.
Carter reported on the radiology front, informing the board that equipment is already in transit to be delivered to Memorial Hospital. While the MRI and CT scanners are currently being shipped to their destination, Carter made the determination that the hospital will need the new MRI prioritized to replace the deteriorating machine currently in place.
Imaging is expected to arrive this week to move forward with installation planning and design.
Carter reported that the power supply on the radiology table went down, requiring the use of mobile equipment in its place. A new power supply is also on the way this week, and is expected to be installed by Brown Medical Imaging.
While Carter did not yet want to name a date for completion of work, he said he believes everything should be in place around mid-June.
The Memorial Hospital of Texas County Authority Board of Trustees has set a new schedule for meetings, and will now meet on the second Wednesday of every month at 5 p.m. The next regular meeting is scheduled to convene on May 9 at 5 p.m. in the board meeting room in Memorial Hospital at 520 Medical Drive in Guymon. These meetings are open to the public.
For the full story, see Wednesday's Guymon Daily Herald