The Massena Memorial Hospital Board unanimously voted to file a certificate of need to become a Critical Access Hospital. Photo: Fernando Narro

Apr 09, 2019 — The Massena Memorial Hospital continues to deal with its financial problems. It is millions of dollars in debt and it’s now turning its sights to the federal government for help. The hospital board voted unanimously yesterday to try to access money usually set aside for even smaller hospitals.

The taxpayer-owned hospital is not treating as many people as it once did, and revenues have declined steadily for more than three years. But a new window of opportunity has opened for the hospital because of that decline. The federal government has a program to help small rural hospitals that struggle to stay afloat on their own. It’s called Critical Access Hospitals. It’s a designation that provides full reimbursement of Medicare costs.

Massena Memorial Interim CEO Pat Facteau says becoming a critical access hospital would bring in more than $3 million. “That’s additional reimbursement of $3.5 million based upon where we were in 2018, so that’s $3.5 million to our bottom line. It’s basically cash,” Facteau said.

To qualify for the Critical Access label, hospitals should have no more than 25 beds, keep an average length of stay of 4 days or fewer for acute care patients and provide 24/7 emergency care services.

“We have to realize that had we not lost the patient volume that we’ve lost, three or four years ago we did not qualify for critical access. Now we do,” Hospital Board Chairwoman Loretta Perez said.

Massena Memorial has 50 beds, double the maximum to qualify. But Facteau says they are only averaging 17 patients per day, so he thinks they would be eligible.

“We are right now, we are living in that. So, the only difference would be is, we are doing everything exactly the way it is now, is we would get paid. We would get a different reimbursement and we would improve our bottom line by $3.5 million,” Facteau said.

Facteau says the timeline for becoming a critical access hospital is not clear, but he says he expects the process to take between six to eight months.

But Massena Memorial’s financial problems are bigger than the money they would get from this designation. Massena Town Supervisor Steven O’Shaughnessy says the hospital has a $15-million debt.

Just two weeks ago, the hospital Board fired Chuck Gijanto, its previous CEO. Then, it announced it would let St. Lawrence Health System, based in Potsdam, to perform an assessment of its finances to develop a turnaround plan for the struggling hospital.

According to a press release, that plan could potentially include a proposal from St. Lawrence Health to acquire Massena Memorial. David Acker, St. Lawrence Health System CEO declined to comment on those talks.