Hospital scheduled to recieve new AC unit

At the monthly hospital board meeting on Friday, July 29, it was announced that Olney’s Hamilton Hospital will be getting a new chiller in September. Until then the hospital will continue to use a rental unit and expects there to be minimal down time when the switch over occurs in September.

New commercials were shown at the board meeting on Friday for Archer City’s clinic and the Olney Family Clinic. The commercials will run to capitalize on markets that the Olney Hamilton Hospital District believes they can tap into.

The hospital is set to receive it’s audit report on Tuesday, August 2. In the financial report at the board meeting, it was revealed that another solid financial year is expected. The biggest expenses and margins  in the financial report surrounds the an increase in write offs due to higher deductibles. Higher employee health care costs are also a concern on the expense side. 

Hamilton Hospital CEO Michael Huff said that working on getting contractual adjustments down will be a major push as they look at opportunities in the coming weeks. Getting those contractual adjustments down could ultimately go the farthest in limiting expenses. Due to minerals, tax collection is expected to be down this year for the hospital district. Most entities are experiencing the same results in the region.

Other notes from the monthly board meeting include a change that is coming to the color coding system. It is a statewide change and the new system will go toward stating the incident or situation versus color coding it. Code Blue (a patient crashing situation) will remain in effect. It was also announced that  future strategic planning will occur for the hospital in October. It was also stated that  patient food service satisfaction was at an impressive 80 percent for the month.