Administrator’s Bi-Weekly Review For Two Weeks Ending January 31st, 2026

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community

Already into month two of 2026! Our world is just so crammed full of constant data flowing all around us, that I am convinced there is too little pause in our days, that time is truly moving faster! And no end in sight to less data. Guess that means we are all going to grow to be AI dependent in order to help us process it all – that’s a bit scary.

As we dissect the close of 2025 and compare it to the ultimate close of 2024, we have discovered some really interesting takeaways.  I reported throughout 2025 a sense of plateauing from the two previous high growth years in 2023 and 2024. The difference was that the growth in 2024 was managed largely from a cost-controlled strategy, despite dealing with substantial inflation. The reality of growing volumes on the back of controlling expenses led to a significant claw back from Medicare based on our efficient operations. Unique to our CAH world, CMS had overpaid us and forced us to refund a lot of the gain we thought we had achieved. Void of this “settlement knowledge” at the end of 2024, we did the right thing and made a major investment in our staff’s salaries to start 2025. This cost increase led to a comparative sluggish start for the first three quarters of 2025, until we elected to do an interim cost report, knowing our costs had increased significantly. Again, unique to our CAH world, we received a large make up payment from CMS, indicating they had underpaid us for the first ten months of 2025. So, all said and done, we finished 2025 in an extremely positive manner, and compared to the corrected year of 2024, our operating results appear to be very similar to each. It has truly been a lesson learned for me, as to the nuances of managing a cost reimbursed operation.

Our revenue cycle processing showed considerable improvement in the last quarter, and we are starting 2026 in an upbeat manner. I am reminded of our billing woes that leaked well into 2025, and I feel very optimistic that many of those issues have been corrected. This report has mostly focused on the backend of our hospital business, and I would be remiss not to add that none of that activity would even happen, if first of all we didn’t deliver the attentive and high-quality patient services at the front end. I thank both our Clinical and Non-Clinical teams for truly performing in a great manner throughout 2025! Let’s continue with these efforts throughout 2026!

-Kevin Leeper, CEO