Board Previews New Website Featuring Quality, Pricing and Community Investment of Hospitals Across the State

Texas County Memorial Hospital board members had an early preview of new consumer data in the “Focus on Hospitals” website at their monthly meeting on Monday.

Focus on Hospitals is a consumer-focused website by the Missouri Hospital Association (MHA), of which TCMH is a member. Focus on Hospitals currently provides quality and community data on Missouri hospitals to the public.

A website redesign of Focus on Hospitals is slated to go live in early February, and the new site features pricing as well as quality and community investment data.

“TCMH is one of over 80 percent of Missouri hospitals providing current data to the MHA for the site, and this site is part of the MHA’s efforts to increase hospital transparency,” Wes Murray, TCMH chief executive officer, told board members.

On the new site, consumers can select a hospital, review the hospital’s price, quality or community investment data and compare the data against a statewide average. Consumers can also pick a second hospital to compare data from specific hospitals to each other.

Amanda Turpin, quality management nurse manager, took board members through the soon-to-be-released website. She explained that TCMH does not have data displayed on the site for some quality and pricing measures because the hospital doesn’t treat enough cases or provide services for certain things.

“The pricing is broken down into ‘inpatient’ and ‘emergency’ pricing and includes the current 100 most common diagnosis related groups at Missouri hospitals,” Turpin said.

According to Turpin, the maximum, median, and minimum charges are calculated and displayed with the lowest and highest 10 percent outliers removed.

“Our charges look good,” Turpin said. “You can see that we are down in all areas compared to the state average.”

Turpin pointed out that the TCMH “self-pay” discount of 30 percent was shown on the site, and the self-pay discount was shown for any hospital that provided the information to the MHA.

Turpin specifically pointed out emergency department and newborn birth charges.

“Frequently people complain that the emergency department bill is high, but this site shows clearly that all emergency room visits are expensive, and TCMH is actually lower in cost than the state average,” Turpin said.

Likewise, patients delivering at TCMH incurred less cost with longer inpatient stays at the hospital than at other Missouri hospitals.

“Our pricing is right in line with state averages,” Murray said, adding, “It’s easy to see that it’s affordable to have a baby here.”

Pricing data will be updated annually.

The Focus on Hospitals site includes 23 quality measures for consumers to review. Quality data is refreshed quarterly, and a hospital must have at least 25 cases in a 12-month reporting period to have information displayed.

“The MHA has risk adjusted the data to paint a more accurate picture,” Turpin said.

Factors like age, race and ethnicity, education, community setting, environment, poverty, nutrition, and current health status may affect how a patient responds to treatment in the short and the long-term.

According to Turpin, the patients in Texas County tend to be older and sicker than average, so the TCMH quality data has been adjusted to reflect the patient population.

“The MHA has denoted where the data has been risk-adjusted,” Turpin said, showing the risk-adjusted data points to those present at the meeting.

The community involvement portion of the site includes hospital-specific data that can be found in the TCMH Annual Report such as uncompensated care, payroll and benefits, number of employees, total expenses, and net revenue.

“Comparing pricing and quality shopping is here to stay in healthcare,” Turpin said. “We stack up well in the comparisons.”

In the administrative report, Murray reported that TCMH recently brought in an additional general surgeon for a site visit. Recruiting efforts for primary care physicians are ongoing, but no potential candidates are scheduled for visits at this time.

Family nurse practitioner, Kim Kemnitzer of Salem has been working full-time in the TCMH Walk In Clinic in Houston while another provider is out on medical leave. When the provider returns to work, Kemnitzer will continue to split her time between the Walk In Clinic and the TCMH Family Clinic in Licking where she will work each Monday and Friday.

“With Kim at the Licking clinic, we will have two providers at the clinic five days a week,” Murray said. Kemnitzer will work with Dr. Joshua Wolfe, a family medicine and obstetrics physician, and Whitney Young, a physician assistant, which both work full-time at the clinic in Licking.

Charles C. Scott, MD began working at the TCMH Mountain Grove Clinic two days a week. Scott is a semi-retired physician with over 30 years experience in primary care. Most recently Scott was the associate medical director at South Central Correctional Center. Scott is working with Sara Openshaw, family nurse practitioner; William Wright, family medicine physician, and Tracey Arwood, certified nurse midwife, at the Mountain Grove clinic.

“Kim asked us about returning to TCMH full-time, and Dr. Scott approached us about working part-time,” Murray said. “We are always eager to find ways to plug in area healthcare providers that are looking for work locally.”

Due to a drop in emergency room and ambulance services during the month of December, TCMH ended the month with a negative bottom line of $572,637.14.

“When our ER volumes drop, it always affects our ancillary services like radiology and lab,” Linda Pamperien, TCMH chief financial officer, said in her monthly financial report.

TCMH ended the year with a loss of $2,037,499.21. Pamperien noted that the numbers are “unaudited”.

“I try to project conservatively in my numbers,” Pamperien said. “Our audit should improve the numbers a little.”

Pamperien explained that in 2015 TCMH had $2.2 million in depreciation and amortization costs, and the hospital ended the year with $1.6 million in the general operating fund.

“Our cash flow remains strong,” Pamperien said, explaining that TCMH reduced accounts receivable in the hospital and clinic in 2015, a goal of the finance department at the beginning of last year.

“We also have over $5 million in funded depreciation, but we only earned $12,000 in interest on it last year,” Pamperien said.

Present at the meeting were Murray; Turpin; Pamperien; Doretta Todd-Willis, chief nursing officer; Joleen Senter Durham, public relations director; Ron Prenger, CoxHealth representative, and board members Dr. Jim Perry, OD; Omanez Fockler, and Janet Wiseman.

Board members Mark Hampton and Russell Gaither were not present at the meeting.

The next meeting of the TCMH board of trustees will be Tue., Feb. 23 at 12 p.m. in the hospital board room.