The price of a patient stay at Ellsworth County Medical Center will increase soon.

At the Sept. 21 meeting of the hospital’s board of directors Charles Lewing, director of finance, recommended several changes. All were approved.

The proposal includes increasing inpatient, swing bed and observation room rates. Currently, a private room is $900 per day. That will increase to $1,170 per day. A swing bed room will increase from $700 per day to $900 per day. A swing bed room (intermediate level one) will increase from $250 per day to $325 per day. Finally, a monitored bed unit will increase from $1,100 per day to $1,430 per day.

Lewing said the increases are part of a chargemaster (the list of all billable medical services) review he has been working on since May with Great Plains Health Alliance (GPHA). He said there has not been a review of rates since 2017. Lewing said the room rates were below the market and these increases will keep ECMC competitive with other area hospitals.

Lewing said he is also making price adjustments to more than 300 individual items within the chargemaster, based on that review.

The new rates are expected to go into effect Nov. 1.

In other business:

• Jim Kirkbride, chief executive officer, said the hospital continues to see patients in the emergency department and the rural health clinics with COVID-like symptoms. However, there are currently no COVID positive inpatients at ECMC.

As of Sept. 21, Ellsworth County was listed as having a medium infection status on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracker website.

• Lewing said the hospital had a pretty good revenue report for August. Net revenue from operations was $1,908,488, while operating expenses were $2,265,265.

He said the number of accounts receivable days (AR) declined from 79.06 to 65.77.

“That’s impressive,” Kirkbride said. “Good job, Charles.”

Lewing said the hospital collected $400,000 more in cash in August than it did in July.

He said the 340B discount drug programrelated revenue was distorted this month by $95,000 because the August revenue was accounted for in September.

“There will be a quarter end adjustment for this on the September financials,” he said.

• After a brief executive session to discuss non-elected personnel, the board approved the list of appointments and reappointments as presented.

• After a brief executive session to discuss data relating to financial affairs or trade secrets, the board approved an amended first quarter risk management plan.

The next meeting of the ECMC board of directors is at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19, in the hospital conference room.