Administrator’s Bi-Weekly Review For Two Weeks Ending January 3rd, 2025

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community

I prepared the report for period ending 1-3-2026, but I can’t see that I sent it. So here it is, if you are ok with older news.

Welcome to 2026, ready or not! On the 29^th of December, it was announced that the State of Kansas was formally awarded $222 million of federal dollars over the next five years for the benefit of those delivering rural healthcare, AND secondly, a very pricey change in how the 340B program was going to be administered, was put on hold with a late December ruling to halt said change by a Federal Judge in Maine (and since held up by a US Court of Appeals)! Not a bad way to start our new year, but our challenge will be to follow the rules of securing a piece of the granted award. Getting a check will call for considerable conforming to new rules emanating out of HRSA and CMS – how else would you have a chance to that amount of Federal dollars?

This year’s calendar imposed both year-end holiday weeks into the same two week pay period, so our production performance reported below was about as weak as it could be relative to targets (only 5 green metrics due to multiple closed days) …with the exception of cash collections! I am very proud of the way our revenue cycle team overcame a rough start and middle to our 2025 calendar year and finished with some resounding collection efforts over the last quarter! For missing our 2025 annual budgeted revenue by nearly 7%, we managed to collect in cash nearly 12.5% more dollars than in 2024! A process that began the year gasping for air, managed to right itself quite effectively through lots of effort, led by Lisa Lee, Annette Rice, Sara Roberts and their collective staff. There has truly been some exceptional work put forth to achieve this turnaround. Thanks to all of you who contributed your time, knowledge, and energy!

So, there is real optimism heading into 2026, although tempered with some caution. Our number one objective, beyond hiring another physician or two, is to further grow and cement the retention of our primary service area’s commitment to use our facility’s’ services before going elsewhere. These two objectives go hand in hand, along with our commitment to being as efficient as we can in meeting our customers’ expectations. I truly think the evolution of AI will be an asset this year in helping us meet our objectives! It will be an eventful and sometimes bumpy ride, so I hope everyone is ready and willing!

Thanks for always putting our patients first!

-Kevin Leeper, CEO