June 6, 2011 Board Meeting

An academic perspective:
Neurobiological Correlates of Social Conformity and Independence During Mental Rotation

A  literary perspective:
2+2=5

Some questions that should have been answered last year about the current year's budget that would have saved me from last night.  (It was after all my anger at the ridiculousness of last year's budget that caused me to run for the Board.)


1.  What happens if we cannot achieve the 24.3% reimbursement rate?  Now it may seem that this is not pertinent because, after all, the Hospital is projected to have a 24.1% rate, but each tenth of a percentage of gross revenues represents over a quarter of a million dollars.

2.  What happens if the IGT funds are not as lucrative as in FY2010?  The Hospital projected they would receive another 2.165 million dollars this year when, in fact, the number is closer to 760 thousand.  There was even some hope that the original budget number was conservative and that the actual IGT funds would exceed FY2010's.  Obviously that assumption worked out poorly.

3.  What are the chances we can get financing for the seismic retrofit work and might it behoove us to forego spending over 1 million dollars when we may not be able to move forward?  The answer I got from Director Battani was, essentially that the Board would address that issue when it arose.  We all know how that worked out, but any reading of the financials could have concluded this, and, in fact, I sent maanagement and Director Battani a rough analysis demonstrating the impossibility of obtaining financing months before they revealed this in open session.  Keep in mind, that I had no closed session information when I put together this analysis, yet the Board insisted in public session that it would be a challenge, but they were confident that they could deal with it.

4.  What are our contingency plans on staffing levels if we do not achieve anticipated revenue?

5.  What happens if the court order barring new reimbursement rates goes away?  The answer turned out to be the Hospital was hit with a bill for over 600 thousand dollars.\

6.  What will be the impact of a delay in opening the wound care center?  Can we really locate offices, make lease improvements, hire personnel, and launch a new service in just six months?  The wound care center is now projected to open midway in the fiscal year about one year late (if we keep to the schedule).

BUT I was asking too many questions last night and too detailed ones.  Would that the previous Boards have asked some questions instead of always voting "Aye".