LOWVILLE — Lewis County Health System was awarded the maximum $1 million through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Emergency Rural Health Care Grant program. It was the only facility in New York to garner the grant.
“We were pleasantly surprised,” said Health System CEO Gerald R. Cayer. “These grants are not easy to get and they really do take many hours of time from many individuals.”
Lewis County Health was one of 93 rural health care organizations in 22 states to receive an award, according to a news release.
USDA Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack announced the awards on Tuesday afternoon. The grant program was created in August and funded by the American Rescue Plan Act.
The grant money “will be used to help offset the revenue lost in 2021 due to decreased volume resulting in lower revenue for Lewis County General Hospital,” according to the Health System’s project description on the USDA website.
In October when the Health System began preparing its application, Mr. Cayer said it was clear there would be a significant operating shortfall at the end of the year.
That deficit turned out to be $2 million last year.
“We had the extraordinary expenses related to staffing — incentive pay, overtime pay and travelers — coupled with a reduced volume resulting in lower revenue. In large part those volumes were in our practices, in surgical cases, in medical-surgical and in maternity,” he said.
Because of the deficit, the Heath System has been relying on “emergency funds” that will be at least partially replenished by the grant money which is, Mr. Cayer said, crucial given the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on hospitals.
“There is a health care worker shortage that was in existence before the pandemic and the pandemic only made it worse. There’s a lot to do still,” he said. “All of these challenges are not unique to a single health care system. It is the norm in New York state and the country.”
Although there continues to be “a sustained increase” in surgeries, the increased staffing expenses continue to outweigh and limit that revenue.
“We are still reliant on travel nurses, still reliant on overtime and I think this will be the year where we will have to evaluate which services may have to be scaled back if we can’t successfully fill staff positions. We’re not at that place yet,” he said.
According to Mr. Cayer, the cost for a travel nurse is 30% to 60% more than the cost of a staff person in the same position when considering the costs of salaries and benefits combined, depending on the position and whether it’s specialized.
The mass resignation of eight health care professionals in the hospital’s maternity department to avoid mandatory COVID-19 vaccination caused Lewis County Health to pause maternity services in the fall, adding to the revenue limitations.
“We continue to work very hard to ‘unpause’ maternity. I think we’re taking small but incremental steps forward there,” Mr. Cayer said. “We appreciate the ongoing support of our elected officials as we continue to drive for long-term sustainable health care in Lewis County.”
The grant money is only related to operational losses, Mr. Cayer said, not the $32 million construction project that begins this month to improve the main hospital facility in Lowville. The capital project is funded by a long-term, low-interest bond.
