GMH projects fiscal needs

With the end of Fiscal Year 2015 four months away, the Guam Memorial Hospital has projected their financial needs for Fiscal Year 2016. According to administrator Theodore Lewis, several factors contributed to the budget request of $132 million.

"It's a decrease from last year's request of about $8 million; I think last year was $141.9 million, so this year is $132.7 million. So it's $8 million less." Lewis says one of the major factors is the assumption that 30% of GMH's commercial revenue, which is composed of private insurers will be lost to the Guam Regional Medical City, however, GMH does project an increase in revenue elsewhere. He said, "Actually, the Medicaid book of business is going to increase we are pretty certain that we are going to see continued increase in Medicaid."

That increase is projected to be $26 million in Medicaid revenue in FY2016 compared to about $20 million received last year. "We have had for the last few months an ongoing project to get reimbursement - it's called TEFRA, an acronym that is used to describe the federal rate that they reimburse your Medicare book of business," said Lewis. "And we have a project that has been ongoing that is requesting a rebasing of that to be at an appropriate level."

He says that the level which Medicaid has been paid in the past is very low compared to what most hospitals are paid. But the forecasted loss of commercial revenue the increase in anticipated Medicaid revenue are not the only contributing factors according to Lewis the hospital is catching up on a back log of billings. "The bad news is we went for some time without getting all of our bills out the good news is we are now getting all of our bills out and so now there is cash coming in from those efforts," he said.

According to Lewis the budget request has been approved by the board of trustees and will be submitted to the legislature for their comments.