By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- Despite a quarter of a million dollar loss attributed to fewer Medicaid patients, Massena Memorial Hospital treated 63 percent more patients at its clinics in the first part of the year than over the same period in 2017.

A financial and statistical summary says their clinic network treated 9,716 patients in the first part of 2018, up 63 percent from the 5,930 over the same time period last year.

Sue Bellor, who chairs the board’s Planning Committee and Performance Improvement Committee, highlighted Dr. Henri Gaboreau’s clinic when giving her report during the Monday Board of Managers meeting. She said he has seen 239 patients, performed 206 surgeries and had 1,037 clinic visits since coming on board over the summer.

The uptick in clinical visits defied numbers for inpatient admissions, which fell about 10 percent below their budget for February and about 11 percent below the number for the first two months of 2017. Their emergency visits also fell slightly below expectations for February and also the total for the same time period in 2017, as did observations visits and all outpatient registrations with the exception of clinical visits.

CFO Pat Facteau at the Monday meeting said so far this year, they treated about 51 fewer Medicare cases than over the same time period last year. Those cases typically draw a $10,000 reimbursement, he said.

MMH in February saw a $243,122 loss from operations, which leaves them $304,677 about a half million dollars behind where they were last year.

“We’d be right about where we were last year at this point” if not for the shortage in Medicare cases, Facteau said. “That doesn’t mean we won’t get it back.”

MMH CEO Bob Wolleben said he believes the early 2018 slump in admissions and registrations is temporary and expects numbers to pick back up as the year goes on.

“Eventually, people get sick,” Wolleben said. “We’re here to take care of them. We believe it was a short-term cyclical deviation and we’re watching our volumes this month and they are trending higher … we're anticipating January and February was a bit of a fluke.

“Through the first 19 days of March, we’re already 110 visits over the prior year, so we’re going to make up some ground … Emergency room visits, a certain percentage of them turn into admissions.”