A $3.5 million shortfall at Star Valley Health in the past two months was related to accounting procedures, CEO Dan Orydna explained in an update interview, carried on SVI’s Weekday Wake-Up program.

“To make sure that there’s accuracy, the $3.5 million was a journal entry for accounting on bad debt,” he explained. “The hospital has been profitable and what it impacted was our cash position. And, so where we hit the brakes was on spending to make sure that we understood where our cash position was and our day’s cash on hand.”

Ordyna continued, “And we feel really good. It’s about 90 to 120 days out since we alerted everybody to the situation. We feel really good about how we have stabilized it and the plans that we’ve put in place to move in a direction where we get back on that growth initiative that we’ve experienced over the last three years.”

The North Lincoln Hospital District (Star Valley Health) is working with the county as the hospital, like other government agencies, will experience a revenue reduction with the drop in property taxes.

“Obviously this upcoming year we’re going to receive a 25% reduction in our levy. And so we’re having to adjust our spending,” Ordyna said, noting that most of the money is used for emergency services. “All of that tax levy money has been going to EMS plus another million dollars to pay for EMS here in the valley.”

He continued, “And so part of the changes that we made with EMS was in preparation for that reduction. And I know that there’s a lot of concerns about EMS being short staffed and it’s not. We’ve met with all of the leaders from Alpine, from Thayne, from Afton, the county.

“They understand our staffing plans. The response times have not dropped. I think of our EMS providers, they’ve just been remarkable.”

But we have to make adjustments in light of the changing conditions of where our funding comes from. And again, all that money that we received from the county, from the property taxes of the good citizens of Lincoln County, are all going towards EMS.”

And I think most people that have experienced EMS these last three years, they have seen a dramatic improvement in response times, in the training of the EMS. And overall, we feel like we’ve gotten it to a good place. Now, the question is going to be,  how do we sustain that?

Orydyna advised the stakeholders with EMS will be brought together for further discusssion.

“We’re bringing all the stakeholders together to make sure that we’re making decisions that make sense for at least this part of the county, “ he said. “We’re planning on having those conversations so that there’s a clear direction as to what that sustainability looks like.”