By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA -- Massena Memorial Hospital finished 2015 more than three-quarters of a million dollars in the black, but public opinion surveys are not meeting the CEO’s goals.

Overall for 2015, MMH finished the year $818,000 ahead, compared to losing $206,000 in 2014. CEO Robert Wolleben said upon taking his post last year he wanted to finish 2015 more than $150,000 ahead.

“We reached our goal with a lot of hard work by a lot of people,” Wolleben said.

Of their year-end profit, $636,000 was acquired in December.

CFO Patrick Facteau said positive factors included pension accounting adjustments and receiving a settlement for bad debts and charity work that in 2011 and 2012 were improperly recorded.

“We had a positive month,” said Scott Wilson, an MMH Board of Managers trustee who chairs their Finance Committee.

On the public opinion side, their patient rating fell below Wolleben’s expectations.

Patients are given exit surveys where they are asked to rate the hospital and tell how likely they are to recommend MMH to others. The only surveys counted towards their score are those where a rating is a 9 or 10 out of 10.

“We did not hit the goals we established,” Wolleben said.

He wanted their overall satisfaction to be rated above the 40th percentile among a pool of other similar-sized hospitals nationwide being rated on the same survey. They finished 2015 at the 18th percentile.

His goal for the emergency department was for patient ratings to score in the 80th percentile. They finished in the fourth.

However, he said when respondents were asked to rate their likelihood of recommending MMH, they scored in the 54th percentile.

“Despite the fact we didn’t do so well ranking the hospital 0 to 10, they would be more likely to recommend the hospital,” Wolleben said. “I cannot explain that.”

He said a promising number in the face of national trends is their overall admissions went up by 1 percent.

“National trends are declining very rapidly,” Wolleben said. “We believe there is an opportunity to grow in 2016 … to grow admissions by recapturing market share going outside our community.”