Hospital Authority Holds Off on Approving FY18 Budget

Stephens County Hospital’s Authority Board will wait until next week to vote on their fiscal 2018 budget.

The hospital’s fiscal year begins October 1 so by law, the budget must be passed by the end of September.s

At their regular meeting Monday, the board was set to vote on but decided instead to go into an executive session to discuss the budget and the hospital finances.

But according to Hospital Adminstrator Lynn Anderson, after the executive session, the board voted to delay the passing the budget until next week.

“We’re expecting some additional analysis from our consultants that we expect to have by this Friday,” Anderson explained. “The Board wanted to include that data into the new budget so it would be a more precise budget for us next (fiscal) year.”

Anderson said consultants from Stroudwater Associates presented their recommendations during the executive session but said they were still working on the charge master data.

“The charge master in a hospital is a data bank that has a charge associated with the different services offered at the hospital,” she said. “So, every couple of years you have that reviewed to make sure it is at market. And we just wanted to make sure as we go into this fiscal year that we have the updated charge master.”

The board will meet next Thursday, September 28th for a called meeting to vote on FY18 budget.