The Kimball Health Services Board of Trustees reviewed the health insurance premium for hospital employees at their recent meeting on Monday. With the issue having been presented to the board before, a decision was needed to be made.

“We are up against D-Day and we need to make a decision,” CEO Julie Schnell said.

Although all plans showed an increase of 8 percent to the NACO plan, the board wanted to present the best options to the employees.

After some discussion board member Max Revell made a motion to approve the Blue Cross Blue Shield proposal.

The budget was compiled by Chief Financial Officer Jim Garbarino and Schnell. After a budget had been prepared, Garbarino said it went to the hospital staff managers to look over and make suggestions.

“The managers did a good job of going over things,” Garbarino said.

Garbarino said the proposed budget would put the hospital in the red by more than $800,000.

Schnell said that because she knew how the board would respond, she created a “Slash and Burn” budget to be reviewed as well.

This budget was more conservative and only showed a loss of about $280,000. Schnell reminded the board that budgets tend to be a worse case scenario.

After review, the board agreed to go with second proposal. Adding to it, Revell said he would like to see a more detailed balance sheet next time as well.

Schnell told the board that Dwayne Haefle has experience doing PACS and agreed to review it for the hospital. Haefle is the hospital’s information technology person.

Schnell said that Haefle is working on it and will be presenting her with his analysis. Schnell said she wanted to wait until she had that before presenting anything to the board.

Garbarino reviewed the hospital’s financial statement and said that for the month of April the hospital was up by about $25,000. Although good, he added that the hospital is down on the year by more than $70,000. Garbarino attributed a lot of the gain on the month on the swing beds.

Cindy Cramer reviewed the quality control report. She said that based on patient surveys, patients are generally happy. Cramer said she has received some less than stellar reports but the department heads are addressing those situations.

“Overall, we are getting a majority of excellent and goods,” Cramer said.

During the CEO’s report, Schnell said that the storm did break some windows and cables are down. There was also damage done to some of the lighting fixtures outside, Schnell said.

Schnell said the project for the Rural Nebraska Health Network is scheduled to begin in the latter part of the summer. As long as everything goes well, the fiber optic part of the network could go live this spring.

Schnell reported on the ambulance study the hospital presented to the county commissioners. She said the report was not well received. Schnell said the are getting more detailed information and plan to submit it for another analysis.

As for recruiting, the hospital continues to look for a provider.

“We are still trying,” Schnell said.

Schnell said she is working with Horizon West in Scottsbluff to have more visiting specialists in Kimball. Horizon West is putting an emphasis on outreach and Schnell said they want to capitalize on it.

“We are trying to increase the number of hours specialist are available here,” Schnell said.

In other business the board approved Seim, Johnson, Sestak and Quist LLP of Omaha. to do the audit report for the hospital this year. The firm was chosen out of three applicants.

The board also reviewed the results of employee surveys. Schnell said the comments have been sent to the department heads to be looked at. The department heads are then supposed to submit to Schnell an action plan on how to deal with negative comments.

Board president Sharon Baker asked that Schnell report an update to the board at the next meeting.

With nothing further, the board adjourned.