Financial Services
Despite a difficult year, Ashe Memorial Hospital/Segraves Care Center,
Inc. continues to be your primary and extended care facility offering a wide
variety of excellent services to the residents of Ashe County and its
surrounding neighbors. Your hospital has worked to grow, enhance services,
and provide quality healthcare to our community. As a result of these efforts,
the hospital was named the National Rural Healthcare Organization of the Year
by the National Rural Health Association.
Ashe Memorial Hospital, Inc. is a not-for-profit acute care hospital
which provides inpatient, outpatient, and emergency care services. We, like
other healthcare providers, face operating issues like increased competition,
persistent workforce shortages, decreases in reimbursement from governmental
agencies, soaring insurance rates, and growing numbers of uninsured and
underinsured. Aging plant needs and the rising cost of essential services and
technology mean tough economic choices for us as well as all hospital leaders.
As you find that our healthcare services are needed by you or your family, our
Patient Financial Services and Registration staff are available to assist you
with qualification of health service coverage as well as effectively
communicating our payment programs to you. Therefore, as we work to achieve
our mission as a primary healthcare provider, we focus strongly on continuous
improvement, enhanced customer service, and accountability to those we serve.
During this fiscal year, Ashe Memorial Hospital had 1,538 acute care
admissions with 5,507 acute patient days. Emergency Room visits of 12,203
were essentially the same as last year, while visits of 2,099 to our after
hours medical clinic, Mountain Family Care Center, were down by 20% from the
previous year. For four consecutive years outpatient visits have increased,
and in 2006, the 29,362 visits were an 8.4% increase over the prior year.
Segraves Care Center maintained an average daily census of 57.1 with less than
a 1% decrease.
Gross Revenue for 2006 amounted to a little over $41.5 million, up 11.2%
from the previous year. Of this amount, over $18.5 million was taken as
unreimbursed care in governmental contractual adjustments (the difference
between normal patient charges and amounts expected to be received under
reimbursement programs), charity care, and bad debts. The facility employed
over 300 people which calculated to 262.4 FTE's (full-time equivalents).
Payroll and benefit costs were over $14.4 million, about 51% of the Total
Expenditures of $28,486,471. With the increase in payroll and benefit
costs of over $ 2 million, the increase in non-payment for services (bad
debt) amounting to $ 2,463,525, and the regulated reduction of payments from
the federal government for outpatient services of $ 350,000, the hospital
experienced an operating loss of $ 2,856,973. With the addition of other
income including generous contributions and grants, the Net Income was a loss
of $ 2,074,445.
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