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Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community We are celebrating Hospital Week this week, and it has been fun to see many of you letting your hair down and joining in on the “Dress the Decade Day”, as each progressive day has moved us through the fifties to the nineties. A shout out to the Team Building Committee, who once again brainstormed a new theme, new treats, and new ways of recognizing each of you for being stellar partners in what we strive to do each day: serve our patients in a TOP TIER manner! Thanks to each of you for persevering through sometimes hectic and stressful times and also for taking on side duties when times are a little bit on the tamer side. Catch up work is always waiting for us in healthcare. I hope you all feel appreciated…that is easier done when you stay tuned into appreciating others! The work we do simply can’t be done without the whole team working as one. I alert everyone – and we just found out about this on Wednesday – that we will have an outside surveyor visit us late morning on Monday, the 18th. Her name is Megan Martin, from Sunflower Health Plan, which is one of the three Managed Medicaid Contractors for the State of Kansas. She will want to know that we know our emergency preparedness / fire plans, that we practice effective infection control techniques, that we inform our patients of their rights. This will be an abbreviated version of the conventional State Survey, but very important that we do well, or we could lose the privilege of treating the Sunflower beneficiaries or policy holders. So, my alert of two weeks ago has quickly come to fruition. Please tidy things up around your area as best as you can between now and then! And do know where your policy books are located or where to find them on HealthDocs. I want to close with a Big Congratulations to all of you who are home to or related to a 2026 Graduate. It is milestone moment for so many at this time of year, and we can hope that some of these graduates get drawn into a healthcare career! Enjoy your celebrations with them. The same encouragement applies with this letter: please keep our patient’s needs and expectations foremost in your daily work thoughts, and I do thank you for holding onto that mindset. Have a great next two weeks! -Kevin Leeper, CEO

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community I hope all of you survived a no surprise tax-day season, although some of us may have just kicked the surprise downstream in filing the old extension. I for one have yet to find out if a surprise awaits me. I write this on May Day, so another month is again behind us. This pay-period included annual celebrations for two of our very important service lines: Laboratory and Health Information Management. I extend my thanks to these two great MCH teams that play such instrumental roles within (and outside) our organization. Thank You All! We now look forward to National Nurses Week followed by National Hospital Week! I’d like to remind everyone that “survey preparedness” needs to be refreshed in everyone’s mind. It is easy to be complacent when the State of Kansas is so far behind in reviewing so many of its hospitals. And complacency can easily breed sloppiness and carelessness when it comes to keeping up with our annual training / CME recertifications or licensure requirements. We must ask ourselves that when a surveyor walks through our doors after nearly nine years since the last walk through, will they be able to readily spot some easy deficiencies? Are we as white-glove-clean as we desire to be…are we current with thorough review of our charts, our policies, and/or our job function checklists…are we current with our annual HIPPA, fire, electrical safety, and emergency preparedness training validations???? Showing a surveyor that we maintain easy to find evidence of all these things for each of our staff members will make us survey ready. I would allow that until each of us can speak confidently about these things (and attest to other department specific requirements) that we still have work to do. PLEASE SEE YOUR DEPARTMENT MANAGER if any of these items sound foreign to you…because surveyor’s desire to ask questions of whomever they come across. Thank you in advance for desiring to stay current. As summer approaches, we need to stay focused on preventative care for those in our community that may be taking time off and can better embrace taking care of themselves. Now is a great time to get annual checkups and to learn from us how to be healthy and stay healthy. Exercise is easier to embrace in nice weather. I encourage each of you to build an exercise routine, and invite a friend to join you, so you are more apt to stick with it. I am going to practice what I am now suggesting! To close, I ask again that you keep our patient’s needs and expectations foremost in your daily work thoughts, and I do thank you for holding onto that mindset. Have a great next two weeks! -Kevin Leeper, CEO

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community March Madness is behind us…congrats to Deb Benning for securing the local pool… and away we go into the busy cattle moving month of April, as the green grass is already looking lush all over our Flint Hills, along with some continuous burning.   We are showing three solid first quarter months behind us, even as April has softened a bit, volume wise. We just got word late this week that statewide, the release of multiple awaiting RHTP grant awards has been pushed back a month to May 15 th , to better rank and spread out the abundant number of worthy applications. Not sure what that will mean for the four submissions we have applied for to date, but we can hope that at least a couple of ours will rise to an offering status. The new rules for significant dollars available through the Evidence Based Practice pool of funding is just now being released, and I believe we will be qualified for participation in that program without a formal application - both through our hospital and through our four RHCs.   Our onsite 2025 Forvis Audit work has been completed, and from early dialogues, it appears that little has been discovered to alter our prior December YTD estimated results. Forvis anticipates a June presentation of their final report, a good bit earlier then they managed last year.   Our Department Managers were introduced to a Lean / Six Sigma Training Program this week, which was received with a lot of energy and great dialogues around four identified opportunities for improvement within our operations. Further work and training in these four areas will be focused on over the next few weeks at the staff level, so that more ideas can be generated from those in the front lines. I look forward to this process for problem solving to be adopted into our daily work routines. More to be reported on these four areas in the near future.     Just another word of encouragement to keep our patient’s needs and expectations foremost in your daily work thoughts, and I do thank you for that mindset. Have a great next two weeks! -Kevin Leeper, CEO

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community It does feel like Spring is well under way in Central Kansas! If one last ice storm forces me to scrape a windshield for the first time this winter (truly would be the first!), then I will be ok with it…not happy about it, but OK, because a blast won’t last long at this point. Now if we could just get some rain…and not so much to flood our parks this year.   I want to give a departmental SHOUT OUT this week. And the winner goes to our evolving Surgery Team!! The team consists of Jeremy, Vanessa, Sam, Tabatha, Mercedes, Morgan, Abby, Beverly, and Shaun / Bryce! And of course, they would not have a lot to do without our Surgeons: Lora and Brett Seigle, and Drs. Samani and Hunt!! Last Friday this team turned out nine cases for Dr. Hunt to mark a day absolutely worth shouting out! I feel certain it’s the highest number of non-eye cases we have done in one day in many a year! Nine satisfied patients left here that day and I just want to thank the team for a SUPER JOB DONE. And until you actually execute a day like that, you don’t go in thinking it can be done as efficiently as it was. So, I hope and trust our team learned something about themselves and are now confident that it can be done again and even reach the ten-spot! Go Team!   Another three RHTP grants were completed today, with Morris County Hospital attached as a participant to each! None of the three “network oriented” grants were alike, though two very similar, and the rules were clearly identified as saying a hospital can participate in multiple applications. We will hope for the best and be happy with any one or two of the three…certainly we won’t win three for three????? The capital grant submitted two weeks ago is supposed to announce its awardees in two more weeks.   I am grateful for what appears to be three solid months out of the 2026 gate. We do have a great team across all of our aisles here at MCH, who collectively keep things churning day in and day out. And this week we welcome into our folds the team led by Dr. John Mosier in Herington: Leann, Nicole and just yesterday being joined by our own Business Office staff member, Kayla Riffel-Condon. They have been preparing all of this week to be ready for a reopening as an MCH Clinic on Monday, April 6 th . Their Clinic Manager, Sara Roberts, has done a great job planning for this big day!   Thanks for always putting our patients FIRST. Have a Blessed Easter weekend! -Kevin Leeper, CEO

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community Motivated by the Rural Health Transformation Plan’s targeted commitment to funds for rural healthcare, announced by President Trump over six months ago, KDHE has at last through CMS began issuing the guidelines for applying for funding on the first three of 24 programs earmarking direct grant dollars to healthcare organizations across Kansas. In exchange for a check, organizations must demonstrate a plan for producing measurable results which will yield one or more of the following core value initiatives: 1.) create better health outcomes for Kansans, 2.) improve access for rural Kansans to a well-coordinated continuum of care, 3,) utilize more efficient newer technologies that help reduce healthcare costs, and 4.) use the funds in a manner that promotes financial sustainability for those delivering the service(s).   So, the race for dollars is on across Kansas, and the first deadline just passed us at noon on Friday the 20 th . MCH participated in this program calling for capital expenditures investing in continuum of care opportunities. We elected to ask for funds that will convert our 2.5-year vacated ambulance barn into a senior focused behavioral health outpatient program. Senior Life Solutions would be our partner in this venture and help us meet a missing service in our region. Depression and loneliness are common amongst our single seniors and there is currently no nearby deliverable that truly addresses this condition. The program will provide transportation to and from our facility for three days a week of group and/or individual activities and therapy.   In two more weeks, we will plan to respond to the next program deadline of asking for collaborative initiatives, between a network of healthcare providers, which can collectively work to yield improved quality outcomes, and also gravitate towards a reimbursement model based on outcomes vs. the fee-for-service model now deployed - by the end of 2031. It is nice to be in a position where 2-3 existing groups are courting us to align with them. I trust that we can make a choice of which group to more formally align with during our Board meeting this coming Wednesday.   At least one other funding program bears interest to MCH and its strategic outlook for this new era. Most likely it will be to immerse ourselves in the telehealth arena to better access specialty support in line with the care of our more ill and /or critical patients. This might be related to the collaborative component of aligning with larger hospitals or with contracted specialty groups that care to reach out to rural markets. We have been amazed at the number of opportunities that exist for this type of partnering.   These are busy, but exciting times, and we hope to soon be the benefactor of some new service line possibilities! -Kevin Leeper, CEO

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community Month 2 of 2026 is now already behind us. What an eventful finish to its end, and we can sure be grateful (for now) that we are still seeing our surroundings fully intact and undisturbed, except for the desired rainfall. Middle East communities abroad aren’t so lucky.   I am pleased to have updated the tables below to reflect new 2026 targets for the various service lines and stats that we show you regularly. I am also pleased to share that we have more green values than red for the first time in some time…which even includes the surpassing of some larger 2026 targets in some areas, but in exceeding some reduced targets in a few other areas. That said I am going to sign off early as I am in preparation for a Critical Issues Workshop in Wichita tomorrow and Friday, and I need to get this out before the evening finishes. I will have more to say than I know now about some very interesting opportunities MCH can embrace relative to the Rural Health Transformation Grants, which are just now opening up for our applications to be considered.   Until next time, stay on the right path - and make each day amount to something good! -Kevin Leeper, CEO

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community Once in a while you can really feel that your “work” works out! We all need to sense those experiences of satisfaction following identified results of participating in a work effort, or we will probably soon gravitate to working elsewhere – that is just part of our human nature. This month started off with two such results, that will truly make a difference for our hospital moving forward.   After three months of futility seeking assistance from a couple recommended attorneys, I reached out in mid-January to Richelle Marting, JD, of Marting Law, to see if she would research and write a letter to our MAC, WPS, supporting MCH's qualifying for new legislation allowing for EMS cost-based reimbursement, if operated by a CAH.  Within a couple of weeks Marting had a letter in my hand endorsing our eligibility for this new program. We then planned with GPHA to add a drop-down coding option of putting a B2 condition code on each EMS claim, targeting it for eligible cost reimbursement. These instructions were willingly given to Ms. Marta by WPS, which really validates our likely success. So nearly 60% of EMS claims now going back to the first of January 2026, will be captured for 2026 cost reimbursement. The extra funding, estimated to be $450-500K annually, will first begin to be collected following a planned 6-30-26 interim cost report! This result will likely end our long-lasting need of subsidizing EMS operations out of Hospital operations and perhaps enable us to better service the White City area, by stationing a crew there. We will be studying that possibility with the County Commissioners over the next few months.     Secondly, after two years off and on dialogues with Dr. John Mosier of Herington, he has asked our system to partner with him and assist with the operation of his relatively new Medical Clinic. This close alignment will give our current team a nice footprint for growing our Obstetrics and Endoscopy services in a neighboring Community, as well as giving us access to Dr. Mosier filling in to cover our Emergency Room periodically. We welcome serving Herington residents on our campus, as well as on his campus, and this official partnership will further enhance those relationships.   Hope it is evident to all of you how beneficial these two additions will be to our operations! We are certainly having our share of good things over the past several weeks. If only Dr. Heck will add to our recent good fortune. An empty office still awaits you, Dr. Heck. Have a great two weeks, everybody. -Kevin Leeper, CEO

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

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

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community As we brace for our first big winter storm, we can hope that Evergy keeps the lights on…hopefully not the same worry that some bigger cities in this storm’s pathway are wrestling with. MCH will be here no matter what, as our backup generator is well primed and tested.   Januarys are always extremely busy at the back end of our business, as the accurate closing out of the prior year is critical, as is the creation of a new budget for the new year. Changes in coding rules hit us, insurance plans change for many, inventories must be counted, and W-2s and 1099s must get prepared for the latest tax season efforts. So, from my chair, I am very grateful that those on the clinical side of operations (the important side of the ledger), are just as busy taking care of our patients and delivering the required services as directed by our providers! With kids back in school during winter months, it is likely that bugs are getting spread around, and illnesses are more common than not. So, try to stay well out there, my friends.   We had a great day last Friday, spent with Dr. Annie Heck, an FP/OB resident, available for her new placement, somewhere, this coming July. As usual, these new grads are sought by many communities in Kansas, so we must patiently wait for her to make her rounds, and keep our fingers crossed that she finds us the best fit for her budding career. We’d love to have you here, Dr. Heck, in case you are listening.   A retirement was announced at the beginning of this month, and it will be hard to say goodbye to Annette Rice at the end of January. She has been a long-time dedicated coder here and has taught numerous folks through the years about the intricacies of correct charting and documentation of what we do for each of our patients. We’ll miss you, Annette.   In wrapping up December numbers, I am pleased once again to verify that the fourth quarter was very good for demonstrating a growth, year over year, in the amount of work we delivered for our service area. After having relative flat growth for three quarters, activity in our final quarter pushed our 2025 year over 2024 in net patient revenues to a 10% increase. To all of you, we are so honored that you chose us for your required care.   We look forward to taking care of you in 2026. Thanks, MCH Team, for always putting our patients first! Have a great two weeks. -Kevin Leeper, CEO

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community With only a week left in 2025, we can safely say that the looming wind-down period over the next busy family times leaves us mostly just a few moments to think of the new year ahead. The winter solstice was last Sunday, so a good piece of news is that the days are now back on the getting longer cycle. We’re also being privileged this year with a very mild few days, weather wise, so our thinking ahead can be done in relative comfort.   Being my 70 th  year on earth, 2025 passed by more quickly than any I can remember, and though much was accomplished, I feel I am carrying over a few things into 2026 that I had hoped to have checked off the list by now. Certainly, I had hoped to have had a new doctor sign on the dotted line for future employment with us by now…but surely, we can close that need out in the upcoming first quarter. We have a few candidates in the “interested pipeline”. And may I add my thanks for the wonderful contributions made by Dr. Melanie Byram to our medical community over her career. We wish her all the best in her now retired status.   One thing achieved to which we were just recently notified, is the “zero-deficiency three-year-reaccreditation” received by our MCH Medical Clinic! This review demonstrates that a high degree of evidence-based practice occurs here, along with the serving of highly satisfied customers. So, congrats to our 18-19 providers and staff members who contributed to this designation, led by Sara Roberts!   January will bring in a few legislative changes, mostly brought about by CMS and the Big Beautiful Bill. These changes will affect us in both positive and negative ways, so the net impact is still a bit unnerving. Hopefully the new guidelines will be more subtle than substantial, and we will have ample time to adjust.   As this is my last report in 2025, I want to thank all supporters and utilizers of MCH, and we will strive to serve you even better moving forward! Wishing everyone of you a Blessed Christmas and a Prosperous New Year! -Kevin Leeper, CEO

Continued Dedicated Service to Our Community With the Holidays thick in our midst, we are readily reminded how busy our 21 st century December lives have gotten. Once again, it is all somewhat exhilarating and mind twisting at the same time. At MCH we try to fit in as much work as we can into fewer days, as time off is essential to accommodate the extra demands of the season. This year at MCH we are tasked with higher inpatient demands than normal, while our outpatient services have shrunk some because of the holiday schedules. A feel-good thing is that Christmas songs are filling the air, and we are daily cognizant of the coming birth date of our Lord and Savior.   Closing in on another year’s end awakens my gratitude for the gritty performance our entire MCH team has given in 2025. We began the year having lost a physician in the middle of 2024 and also had two of our current providers scaling back some in a pre-retirement mode. Along with a rebalanced Herington market over the previous fifteen months of their post hospital closure, we witnessed a true leveling off in our business following two years of remarkable growth. This was not effectively forecast, so we fell behind our 2025 targets early in the year. But we held to task and with an effort to capitalize on swing bed and new surgery opportunities, we are closing out the year in a robust manner and narrowing the gap in our expected 2025 results. I ask our entire team to feel really good about their efforts this year, and to continue the course we are on. Our recent and ongoing recruiting efforts should soon pay dividends to fill some provider holes with needed relief. Thanks to ALL OF YOU!   The looming cold air of January and February feels more daunting than in recent years, as the warmth of Chief’s winter victories is not going to align with our 2026 calendar. Despite this, we mustn’t forget…they did give us quite the run over the past decade, (although it sure doesn’t lessen today’s sting). It just doesn’t feel like it should be a basketball focus this early on.   Two weeks from today is Christmas, so if I do not get another newsletter out before then (though I hope to), I wish you all a Very Merry Christmas, and some truly relaxing time with family and friends. Do enjoy the SEASON! -Kevin Leeper, CEO