CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Revenue has improved at Charleston Area Medical Center over the last few months due to the high volume of hospital visits related to the flu, according to CAMC Chief Financial Officer Jeff Sandene.
“I think we’re out of the flu. It dissipated over the last several months, but we’re definitely very busy with the flu, unfortunately,” Sandene said.
The CAMC Board of Trustees met in Charleston Wednesday morning.
The number of flu patients in the four hospitals that make up the CAMC Health System has dropped in recent weeks. The CAMC staff has worked overtime to take care of them, Sandene said.
“We expanded our open beds. We had a lot of our staff called in for extra shifts to be able to take the flu patients,” he said.
At least one person with the flu died while hospitalized at CAMC this flu season.
Sandene said CAMC is slowly getting out of its financial problems. He said they’ve been focused on increasing access by adding more physicians.
“We’ve added about 40 new physicians this past year. That then helps us with our access of our overall admissions,” he said.
In 2017, CAMC eliminated 290 positions. Sandene said he does not anticipate additional layoffs.
“We’ve done our operational improvement for the last year and a half. We don’t anticipate any additional cuts, so we have a really solid plan. I would agree that the rest of the year looks really good,” he said.
CAMC employs nearly 6,000 workers.