From Nebraska Public Media:
Jared Chaffin knew last spring that his hospital’s budget would be stretched thin. As CEO and CFO at Warren Memorial Hospital in Friend, Nebraska, he brought his concerns to leaders and board members as soon as he could.
“What I was looking at did not look good, and I had let our administration know,” Chaffin said. “When you're able to make payroll, and that's it, and you can't make vendor payments, it's kind of obvious you're in trouble.”
Insurance reimbursements were running low, and hospital leaders were weighing their options long before it came to a head last July. Hours from not being able to make payroll, it became a race against time to keep employees.
“I know there's nothing any of us could have done at that point, just time had finally caught up to us,” Chaffin said. “We had quite a bit of reimbursement that we were waiting on to come in, and it just had not come in yet.”
Almost immediately, leaders met to submit an application to transition from a critical access hospital to a newly introduced model, a rural emergency hospital.
It meant losing inpatient procedures, but it also meant saving the emergency department. Without one in Friend, people in and around town would need to drive at least 30 minutes to access critical care, a life-threatening window of time.
“Going REH meant a lifeline, and the potential for our (emergency department) to be there years into the future, that is what really drove this decision,” Chaffin said. “If we weren't here, there’s a great potential an emergency patient would not make it 30 minutes down the road.”
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