Statement of Operations

The hospital ended the fiscal year with an overall net loss of $118,000 in comparison to the prior year’s net gain of $952,000. Overall, Natchaug ended the year with a volume increase of 2.4 percent over the prior year, which reversed a three-year trend of declining volumes.

Inpatient volumes saw a 4-percent increase; Journey House residential girls program increased census by 9.3 percent year-over-year; partial hospital (PHP) and intensive outpatient (IOP) levels of care increased volume by 5.1 percent.

However, a subset of the PHP and IOP volume, the young adult programs which opened several years ago in response to an increased need, saw an 18.5-percent decline in census from the prior year. Natchaug school programs saw a slight decline of 0.8 percent from prior years, which represents the fifth successive year of decline and reflects the increased challenge that local school districts face in funding special education needs.

The hospital’s lower level outpatient service volume, which includes the Medication-Assisted Treatment Close to Home (MATCH) program started in response to the opioid epidemic, grew 13 percent from the prior year.

Natchaug did see reductions in adult service volumes in both inpatient (2.5 percent) and ambulatory (2.9 percent) services offset by increases in adolescent and child services. This trend causes challenges as it results in a shift to lower margin services which generally have a significantly higher cost per unit of service. During the year, the hospital realized the full impact of the Medicaid outpatient rate reduction implemented in July 2016. This reduction resulted in an annualized loss of approximately $1.2 million in revenue to the hospital.

Despite the improved overall volumes, the shift toward lower margin services, the higher acuity of our clients and the Medicaid rate reduction depleted net income by $1.1 million, resulting in the $118,000 loss for the period.

The average daily number of patients in the hospital was 53.4, an increase of 4 percent from the prior year. The hospital operated at 94 percent of capacity during the year.

The Journey House program had an average daily census of 11.3 residents, also representing 94 percent of capacity.

The Hospital’s ambulatory programs provided care for an average daily census of 249 clients, an increase of 5.1 percent from the prior year.

Services provided by in-home service programs saw a 6.1-percent reduction.

School programs provided education to an average of 154 students each day.

In the face of increasing care management, federal and state reimbursement constraints and slowing managed care rate increases, hospital leadership and staff continue to work aggressively on reducing costs.

There continues to be significant need in the community. Natchaug remains fully engaged with partners throughout the region and across the state in identifying and addressing those needs. Natchaug will continue to implement many strategies so we can continue to achieve Hartford HealthCare’s vision of being most trusted for personalized coordinated care.