The Greene County Medical Center Board of Trustees met yesterday in regular session.

The Board approved raising the limit for its depository to any of the financial institutions from $3 million to $5 million.

During the financial report, Chief Financial Officer Mark VanderLinden said that February was the lowest month of the fiscal year.  Chief Executive Officer Carl Behne pointed out that the same was true from reports by the American Hospital Association and Iowa Hospital Association and he talked about some other variables that could be attributed to the low patient numbers for last month.

“This time of year, cold weather equals sickness and disease spreading.  But as the temperatures that we’ve had over the last 30-60 days drop into the way negative numbers, it’s not uncommon for folks to stay home.  Ultimately, it’s not a bad thing for the community, we obviously want people to be healthy and safe and happy but when they are healthy it does affect our volumes.”

VanderLinden said that they performed worse financially in February than they did last February.  The gross revenue for the month was at $2.04 million which was less than what was budgeted at $2.136 million.  Patient revenues were also down in February at $1,919 from $2,116 in January.  Outpatient volumes were at 1,881 which was lower than 2,040 that was budgeted.  Even the operating revenues were down overall to $13,892,612 when $15,078,711 was budgeted.  The same with expenses, in February they were at $15,480,632 and $16,976,632 was budgeted for the month.

Behne then talked about the Auxiliary by-law revisions.  Some of the changes that were approved were that they would only meet once a year instead of twice a year and that all property and funds from the Auxiliary would be through the medical center as one entity.

Behne gave an update on the building expansion project.  After the construction bid was awarded to Woodruff Construction last week, they will have a pre-construction meeting with Woodruff and the United States Department of Agriculture on March 27th to finalize the contract.  The groundbreaking ceremony will take place at 3pm on Thursday, April 3rd.