Powell Valley Healthcare's cash on hand was down to just 15.7 days at the start of June despite a record amount of payments collected, but that low number is expected to rise, Powell Valley Healthcare CFO Coby La Blue told board members at a June 24 meeting.

Cash on hand is essentially a representation of how long the hospital could operate and pay its expenses without any revenue collected.

“I hope next month we get that turned around because we've got to get higher than 15 days," PVHC Board Chair RJ Kost said.

La Blue said some of the issues were down to bad timing, including three payrolls in the month and having to make a Medicare Advantage payment. She said the issues now aren’t related to the Change Healthcare cybersecurity breach and fallout from that, which was one of the reasons for the more than $7 million in collected payments, because that was a backlog due to the hospital not being able to receive any payments for a period.

But the hoped for financial recovery hit a snag. 

La Blue said while expenses were mostly within budget, there was an issue with not receiving as much revenue as expected due to an unusually high amount of bad debt.

“We're having a hard time with self pay — bad debt has grown a lot,” she said, adding that recently some people have lost their Medicaid and are now self pay.

CEO Joy Coulston said hospital leaders are working to come up with solutions for the financial issues, including looking at how to bring in more revenue and cut some expenditures if possible.

“We're looking at revenue generation and multiple service lines,” she said. “We’re brainstorming different options … all the things that can help us generate more revenue.”