By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- Massena Memorial Hospital is back in the red and the chief financial officer is putting the blame on "large" employee health insurance claims. They saw a $119,000 net loss for June, and are down $284,000 for the year.

MMH CFO Patrick Facteau said the June loss is attributable to large employee health insurance claims.

“It’s a self-insured plan. We had some large claims. That’s all we can say about it,” he said.

CEO Robert Wolleben said the insurance claims are not tied to MMH’s workers compensation claims.

According to figures from St. Lawrence County released earlier in July, MMH had 15 workers comp claims as of when the figures were made public.

A financial and statistical summary released at the Monday meeting where the board announced the loss says the hospital’s expenses tallied about $219,000 over budget.

Despite that, both inpatient and outpatient volumes for June were over their projections. They discharged 205 inpatients and planned for 165. Total outpatient registrations, including clinics, were at 10,325, over the budgeted 10,243.

“Revenues are up, clinics are up, all of our places are up, Facteau said.

Year-to-date, MMH’s books are in the negative to the tune of $364,629, according to the financial summary. Their budget calls for them to be in the positive by slightly over a half million dollars. At this point in 2016, they were ahead by $406,000.

After years of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars each month, the hospital changed course under Wolleben about two years ago and was posting small gains each month.

In April, they announced a March loss of just over $100,000 which the CEO atrributed to “one-time expenses.”

At the time, he said they made two large payments last month. One was a retroactive payment because of a contract obligation with New York State Nurses Association, the union representing their nursing staff. They also paid a $65,000 physician recruitment fee.

In May, they announced an April loss of more than $400,000, which Wolleben blamed on a drop in inpatient volume.

“It’s almost entirely attributable to inpatient volume. Our expenses were almost exactly what we budgeted,” Wolleben said at the time. “Easter holiday came early, the month also had five weekends. That may not sound very significant but that’s always a factor in the hospital industry.”

They rebounded in May with a $105,000 gain.