The board of Greenville (S.C.) Health System has unanimously passed a $2 billion operating budget for fiscal year 2015 that will doesn't contain a price increase.
Although the budget includes a job increase, room rates will remain flat for the second consecutive year. The 2015 budget also allocates roughly $108 million for routine equipment and new capital projects — including $21 million for continued investments in information systems for an expanded radio-frequency identification tracking system, encrypted computers and mobile devices for physicians to access EHRs, and document management system upgrades. Previously approved capital projects — such as the implementation of Epic — account for approximately $98 million of the budget.
"GHS is now a $2 billion organization, and this new budget is an investment in our vision to transform healthcare," said GHS President and CEO Mike Riordan.
The health system also faces various financial pressures. In FY 2015, GHS will experience $13.9 million in pay cuts because of Medicare reimbursement reductions included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and sequestration. Furthermore, the system anticipates that bad debt and charity care will rise to approximately $524 million in FY 2015, up 14.1 percent from the system's projection for FY 2014. The effects of the state's health insurance exchange and failure to expand Medicaid under the PPACA are not yet clear.