05/21/03
By STEVE DOYLE
Times Business Writer steved@htimes.com
Patients at Huntsville Hospital can expect to see more nurses roaming the halls soon.
The hospital's budget for the coming fiscal year, adopted Tuesday night by its governing board, the Health Care Authority, calls for hiring 100 employees - mostly nurses. The hospital already employs about 4,800 full- and part-time workers.
Chief Financial Officer David Frederick said the hospital should collect close to $460 million from patient care next year and spend $456 million on salaries and benefits, supplies, utilities and other operating expenses, leaving it with a $3.6 million surplus. That's an operating profit of less than 1 percent and won't allow administrators to sock away as much cash as they'd like into a reserve account, he said.
Other budget highlights:
Most employees will get a 3 percent merit raise. Supervisors can grant more to reward their best workers.
Officials plan to spend $16 million on equipment, including a million-dollar air conditioner needed to keep the main campus cool.
Medical supplies are chewing up an ever-larger chunk of the hospital's budget. Now, the hospital pays $900 for each metal stint heart surgeons use to prop open clogged arteries. That will jump to $3,000 when Johnson & Johnson starts selling its next-generation, drug-coated stent.
The hospital's malpractice insurance premiums are going up about $300,000.
Frederick estimates the nonprofit hospital will spend $37 million providing free health care to the poor and uninsured, up from about $35 million this year.
A 600-space parking deck at Gallatin Street and St. Clair Avenue should be finished this fall.
Frederick met privately Monday with the hospital board's finance committee to discuss his budget projections. No one had any questions at Tuesday's meeting, and the budget sailed through on a 5-0 vote. Four board members were absent: Delbert Baker, Richard A. Finch, Warren Strickland and Jean Templeton.
