Finances are improving for Flint Hills Community Health Center.
That was the focus of the Board of Directors’ most recent meeting. Health Center Director Renee Hively says trends are moving in the right direction, and that was confirmed by Chief Financial Officer Stephanie Ringgold. Even with the clinic at Madison High School suffering through the year and eventually closing in December, the Health Center system as a whole ended last year with a profit of over $113,000.
The Health Center began a 36-month financial turnaround plan in the late summer of 2017 after hefty financial losses in August that year. Ringgold says emergency management was the first phase through spring 2018, involving “significant cost reductions.” Business restructuring followed, with an emphasis on what Ringgold calls “prudent expense management” and clinic productivity.
Hively says it has been a tough stretch for the Health Center, but it has also been good for the overall financial stability of the system.
Factoring out the losses of the Madison clinic, the Health Center would have ended 2018 with a nearly $400,000 surplus. Chief Financial Officer Stephanie Ringgold says the Health Center system has not seen those kinds of positive ending balances in almost a decade.
Ringgold says the main financial goal here is to have 90 days cash on hand, which would let the Health Center remain fully operational in case of a lengthy federal government shutdown. Should finances continue ahead of projections, the goal is to add merit-based pay increases and cost of living increases for employees as well as add new equipment.
