CHARLESTON, W.Va. — In order to wipe out a nearly $30 million deficit from last year, Charleston Area Medical Center plans to reduce the number of hires in non-patient care areas in 2018, CAMC President and CEO David Ramsey said Wednesday.
Members of the CAMC Board of Trustees met in Charleston Wednesday morning and received the hospital’s year-end financial report. It was much the same as recent months with an increase in patients but a decrease in revenues. The hospital’s financial problems have been keyed by a growing number of government insurance covered patients that don’t reimburse the hospital at the full rate of care.
In 2017, 83 percent of the large hospital’s patients were either covered by Medicare (48.8 percent), Medicaid (24.38 percent), or PEIA (8 percent). Only 17.4 percent of CAMC patients last year were covered by commercial insurers.
“Eighty-three percent of our patients are paying below costs and 17 percent are trying to make up the difference,” Ramsey told board members.
After the meeting, Ramsey told reporters the hospital system was going to have to learn to do more with less.
“We’re not going to add employees or as many that we might normally add with the volume increases we’re projecting,” Ramsey said.
The board will get a look at the proposed cuts next month. Ramsey said they will mostly be in non-patient care areas.
“We won’t skimp on nurses. We won’t skimp on patient care,” he said.
Ramsey said workers in other areas like food service or warehousing would have to do more with what the hospital believes will be increased patient loads.
“The economy has changed and in order to continue to focus our resources on caring for patients a number of our employees will have to work a little harder or will have to be a little smarter in how we work, frankly,” Ramsey said.
CAMC eliminated 290 positions in the second half of last year. Most of that was done by attrition. Ramsey said layoffs and program eliminations are currently not part of the plan being considered to reduce costs.
“That’s assuming all of our volume and admission assumptions and patient care assumptions are correct,” he said.
Ramsey said the plan is to present the board with a balanced budget for 2018 at the February meeting. That’s expected to come with projecting a five to six percent patient increase and improving “the productivity of our employees.”
The CAMC Foundation had a very successful year on Wall Street and the gains swallowed up nearly all of the hospital’s operating deficit. The CAMC Health System finished at a $1.3 million loss for the calendar year. Ramsey said the system can’t depend on Wall Street . He said it must do things to draw more patients while cutting costs.
“The problem is that (Wall Street) could change tomorrow. So we can’t bet the future of CAMC, which is far too important to the region and the community, on the whims of the stock market,” Ramsey said.
CAMC is one of the state’s largest private employers with more than 6,000 workers.