A view from a bed in the Emergency Room at W.J. Mangold Memorial Hospital in Lockney (Ryan Crowe/FCR)
LOCKNEY – The Lockney General Hospital District and W.J. Mangold Memorial Hospital closed out their fiscal year last week with a large increase in the number of patients seen in their Emergency Room as well as at the hospital’s Briscoe County clinic, but those increases have not translated into increased money coming in.
The board held their meeting last Wednesday, receiving a detailed report from hospital CEO Vince DiFranco and Chief Financial Officer Butch Forrest on the state of the facility as it closes out the year. The pair said while the ER saw 400 more patients over 2021, and the Briscoe County clinic had roughly 600 more appointments, the hospital still took a loss year-over-year due to a number of factors.
The biggest factor, according to DiFranco, was contract staffing for doctors and nurses to fill in gaps following staff departures and vacation relief. With new doctors coming on board, and with the hiring of Chief Nursing Officer Nisha Champaneri earlier in the year, DiFranco said much of that reliance on contract staffing should be going away.
He added another revenue stream for the hospital should be up and running later this month with the new Infusion Center, tentatively set for an October 17 opening. New patient visit options in telehealth could also turn the fortunes of the hospital around, the board heard.
The board did approve the purchase of a new CT scan machine, upgrading from the decade-old machine that had run its course on maintenance to a modern one that will be installed in January. The current machine can produce an image at 16 ‘slices’ per x-ray. The new one to be installed will work at 128 ‘slices’ per image.
The hospital board will next meet on October 26 at 12:00 p.m.
