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Memorial Hospital and Manor Authority began their meeting on Tuesday by reviewing the key financial indicators for the month of October. CEO Jim Lambert opened the discussion saying, “We had a good month. Good revenue and expense control.” The bottom line reported was a net income of $366,546 for October.

Details of the report were reviewed and two areas of special note were the 1360 visits to the emergency department, up 60 from the budgeted expectation, and 30 deliveries in the Women’s Center, where only 20 had been budgeted.

Lambert introduced Michael Windham, the new quality and risk director, who spoke briefly about patient safety having the largest impact on the perception of the hospital in the community. He showed slides of a plan of action and pointed out suggestions for best practices.

Lambert then spoke of the reviews from the latest inpatient satisfaction surveys. He termed it “very positive” overall, improving since the reviews of April through September. 80 percent of those called gave the hospital a 9 or 10 in satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 10. He was complimentary of the staffs, saying there had been good work in all departments and physician practices.

He was excited to single out the emergency department, saying it had earned an overall patient satisfaction rate of 95 percent. This is an area where much improvement has been focused. The staff has been working hard to shorten the length of time a patient waits to be seen and the care received has been deemed high quality.

In other actions, the board approved the purchase of a new Zoll defibrillator for use in the surgery department at a cost of $10,568. It replaces the existing 22-year-old unit, and results in the entire hospital now being equipped with the same Zoll defibrillators. This has the added benefit of all personnel being familiar with the operation of the unit.

The board voted to dispense with a regular meeting in December, and following a closed meeting announced that the Board was in the process of doing an evaluation of CEO Lambert, looking at updating his contract. That matter will be presented at the January meeting.