The good news: Olympic Medical Center is in the black.
The bad news: Black’s also becoming the color of community health care district’s future.
The Port Angeles/Sequim hospital’s commissioners and administrators got this mixed message last week from their independent auditor, Chris Rivard of Moss Adams LLC.
The Seattle-based accounting firm praised the medical center’s financial employees.
Rivard pronounced OMC’s net assets of $101.7 million and liabilities of $24 million “a very healthy picture” of equity versus debt.
Nearly half its obligations stem from a $10 million loan to finance new construction in Port Angeles and Sequim.
Its operating picture, however, is darker: $89 million in revenue and $88 million in expenses.
The $1 million difference has slipped from $4 million in recent years, and the operating margin has dropped from 4.2 to 1.5 percent — half of what hospital CEO Mike Glenn and Chief Financial Officer Eric Lewis strive for in their business model.
Moreover, while the medical center takes in $2,017 per adjusted patient day, its expenses come to $2,047, a $30 negative imbalance that first showed up in 2005.
Follows national trend
The national trend is similar. Rivard called the future “black and it’s getting blacker” as politicians try to trim Medicare payments, even while baby boomers are growing old and infirm.
Hospital commissioners interpreted the audit results with varying optimism Monday.
“That was just last year,” said Jim Leskinovitch of Port Angeles. “There’s a lot of reasons for that.
“We had a very low census [patient population], which was the biggest contributing factor. We don’t expect that to continue.”
Leskinovitch blamed the lack of an orthopedist and a general surgeon for losing patients — and payments — to hospitals that lie across Hood Canal or Puget Sound. The positions have been filled.
“With those things, we should be fine again,” he said.
