TRMC raising patient charges
By GENE ZALESKI, T&D Staff Writer Thursday, September 28, 20063 comment(s) | Default | Large
The Regional Medical Center will increase its charges to patients, but how much more each patient pays will vary.
Patients will see increases for services beginning in October, but calculating what the increases will be for individual patients is not easy, RMC President Tom Dandridge said. The increases vary according to the services received and the method of payment.
“We will have a 3 percent revenue increase,” Dandridge said following the hospital’s Tuesday board meeting. “Four out of 100 people are affected by the fee increase. The rest are on some other fee schedule. So there are very few people affected by the charges.”
The RMC Board of Trustees unanimously approved the increases as part of the hospital’s $161.6 million budget for the 2007 fiscal year.
Currently, many hospital patients pay through health coverage providers under fixed contracts that do not take into consideration a hospital’s budget, Dandridge said.
About 50 percent of the hospital’s patients have Medicare coverage and 17 percent have Medicaid coverage. Both have fixed payment contracts and will be impacted little by charge increases.
About 12 percent of RMC’s patients are self-pay and indigent, and don’t pay or pay very little for services.
About 21 percent of patients use commercial payers and will typically see the greatest increases.
Dandridge said that with an aging populace increasingly dependent on Medicare, the number of commercial payers is expected to decrease, putting a greater burden on commercial business to cover health care charges.
RMC’s 2006 budget is geared toward reaching an A bond rating, a benchmark for other not-for-profit health care entities of similar size, hospital officials have said. Meeting either an A or AA standard demonstrates a hospital’s financial strength.
“The industry is very volatile and uncertain,” Dandridge said. “As the hospital looks to possibly borrow additional money, we need to make sure we generate revenue to pay back our debt.”
The hospital plans to enter the bond market this summer, borrowing between $20 million and $25 million,
The hospital’s fiscal year runs from Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.
The hospital’s spending plan foresees $154.5 million in expenses, including $69.4 million for salaries and $23.9 million for supplies.
The budget includes $15.1 million in benefits. It also includes $11 million in capital improvements, including roughly $2.5 million for the implementation of a strategic plan, $2.4 million for information technology, $1.7 million for medical and nonmedical equipment, as well as $1.7 million to upgrade facilities.
In related matters, Lisa Goodlett, the hospital’s chief financial officer, reported that gross revenues for August were ahead of budget by 2 percent at $35.5 million and total operating revenues were $12.8 million.
Expenses for the month were also up about 9.8 percent, due to supplies and professional fees.
The hospital experienced an operating loss for the month of $56,153.
With total non-operating income for the month at $262,610, the hospital ended with August $206,457 in the black. Year-to-date, the hospital is running a positive bottom line of $712,801.
n T&D Staff Writer Gene Zaleski can be reached by e-mail at gzaleski@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5551. Discuss this and other stories on-line at TheTandD.com.
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Concerned Citizen wrote on Sep 28, 2006 12:23 PM:
confisus sum wrote on Sep 28, 2006 10:32 AM:
worker wrote on Sep 28, 2006 6:48 AM: