Kimball Health Services given clean bill of financial health

A recent audit found that Kimball County Health Services is in great health financially.

CEO of Kimball Health Services, Ken Hunter, along with CFO, Melissa Prante, presented the Kimball County Commissioners board with the results of their in-house audit during the regular board meeting held Tuesday of this week.

Prante affirmed that the audit company provided the hospital and clinic with a clean opinion, which simply means the auditor judged that the financial records and statements were fairly presented and in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

The finding is issued when the auditor believes that the company’s financial statements are sound and free from material misstatements.

This is different from a qualified opinion, which is issued when the auditor discovers something in the financial statements of concern.

Prante apprised the commissioner board of the large increases in the hospital and clinic finances for the previous fiscal year and that the professional fees paid out totaled $180 thousand over and above the previous year.

“Usually when we see an increase in the professional fees, we also see an increase in revenues,” explained Prante, “it’s typically reading of x-rays or labs, so when we see the professional fee increase it’s a good thing.”

Depreciation also increased for the entity, due to an EMR (Electronic Medical Record) system that was installed.

“The expense, we have to end up recognizing is three to five years, so we ended up recognizing almost $700 thousand dollars of depreciation expenses on the EMR,” she said. “We did get an increase in our net income of $445,000, which is an increase of $115,000 over last year.”

Hunter explained that roughly fifty-five percent of all of the hospital and clinic’s business comes from Medicare insurance holders, thirteen percent is from Medicare patients and the remainder is evenly divided between private-pay customers and persons with private insurances.

“We’ve had gross revenues of around eleven million dollars,” he said, “and we either gave away or didn’t get paid over one million dollars, which is about twice the state average.”

All in all, Hunter explained that this has been one of the best financial years for the hospital and clinic that he personally has witnessed since working at the Kimball facility.