Many hospital and health system finance leaders are bracing for tough budget decisions heading into 2027.
At Arbuckle Memorial Hospital in Sulphur, Okla., CFO Denise Welch is focused on protecting the hospital’s technology and facilities, while looking for savings in staffing redundancies and outside contracts – all in an effort to keep the hospital running and reimbursed.
Ms. Welch told Becker’s that reducing wages would be difficult due to competition.
“We are looking into specific staffing reductions regarding redundancy as well as relying on electronic processing simplification,” she said. “We are budgeting flat specific outside services that are contract driven or can be performed in house.”
One area the hospital is protecting is informatic infrastructure.
“Keeping our informatic infrastructure up to date is something we are not cutting,” she said. “We need to reduce our outside exposure, as well as delay treatment due to outdated equipment/software. As a critical access hospital, we are addressing building infrastructure on areas fully depreciated and updating those areas to keep our current reimbursement.”
