Administrator’s Bi-Weekly Review For Two Weeks Ending September 26th, 2026

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community

As we ease into the final quarter of 2026, we pause to recognize today as National Homemade Cookie Day. I hope each of you get your fix for the day (tomorrow’s never too late), and I thank our kitchen for serving up a delicious Choco Chip variety as today’s desert. We have also had our ease back into a football season, where some of our teams have had their bubbles already burst…but at least our Chiefs seem to have rediscovered their mojo. And those Braves appear to be a force!!!

As we now see the majority of our year in the rear-view mirror, it is apparent that our year after year snapshot is not going to enjoy the rather amazing growth we had been experiencing for the previous three year-ends. Overall, our 2026 is at best holding its own to 2025 - with a few noted highlights, as well as a few head-scratching lags to prior year’s numbers. I want to thank the few department managers that have come to me with these same recognitions and have hypothesized with me regarding some of the reasons that might have attributed to this tapering off. I have changed up this newsletter and added a specific analysis of our various statistics and how they each fared when comparing the like three quarters of both 2025 and 2026. See the grid at the end of this report. I have offered only 1-2 contributing factors on each of the variances, and if anyone wants to make additions to these reasons, please share them with me and I may forward to this audience in the next edition. Variances are really good things to take note of, as they either represent opportunities for improvement or opportunities to stay the course. And probably the best variance in this whole list is the very first one: it never hurts to grow cash by 13% over prior year, especially with the growing costs of doing business!! Let’s hope we stay on that course. Though I might have noted a few responsible individuals who helped drive some of the changes in this report, I chose not to, as I trust it is highly discernable who is responsible.

I am very hopeful that my next biweekly report will be able to focus on outcomes released by our newly formed network called PrairieLINK, an affiliation of four rural hospitals and Stormont Vail. I have referred to them briefly in the past, but what we are about to unfold will be very exciting, once we can attach some definitive timelines. Add in some projected releases from Oracle Health – “coming sometime” since last January, and I feel we have done too much hurrying up and waiting for a few months now. But some good things are getting very close to our midst.

Until then, do have a great next two weeks and do extend your best care to our patients.

-Kevin Leeper, CEO