WCHS missteps

To the Editor:

It’s disturbing that some of our citizens are treated with such distain and disrespect: Our commissioners, the Weston County clerk, and now six Weston County Health Services business office employees. Three of these ladies have dedicated several decades to WCHS’ success and survival — but their loyal dedicated contribution was rudely ignored as they were recently fired and one by one marched to the door. They weren’t even allowed to retire gracefully. How degrading and insulting! One of the women had worked there for 43 years, and the other two had been employed at the facility for 23 years. Being the true professionals they are, they didn’t take to social media or rally the newspaper to raise Cain. They didn’t do anything wrong to warrant termination. It was called restructuring.  

The WCHS board has decided to outsource their billing, which I might add has been tried at least twice over the years. Each time the billing has been brought back in-house at a huge cost — rather expensive mistakes to discover outsourcing didn’t improve revenue, cash flow, timely/correct statements, or customer service. Patrons didn’t like talking to strangers about their bills. Turned out that outsourcing was more expensive than having their own billing department. There was less control over the accuracy of the financial data but most concerning, it decreased local oversight and transparency necessary to protect WCHS against fraud. Historically, these companies promise much but deliver little. 

I guess I’m not sure why disrupting the revenue cycle of your business would be a good idea if you’re trying to improve your cash flow. It’s clear that someone didn’t do their research. Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result is the very definition of insanity.  

If you’re looking to improve cash flow, how about stop unnecessary spending or adhere to the reality of a budget? Pharmacy didn’t need a half million dollar piece of equipment with no return on investment and wasn’t budgeted. They didn’t need to recently update to a new computer software system when the current one was working. WCHS doesn’t need any more six-figure C-Suite administrators — especially when outsourcing their work. I wonder, did the board even seek bids or did they just “rubber stamp” the chief financial officer’s recommendation because she’d worked with them before? That’s a red flag for me, especially when lack of local control and oversight is going to be an issue. 

WCHS is the smallest Critical Access Hospital in Wyoming. It’s high time we stop spending like a conglomerate. Our taxes help fund WCHS and I’d prefer them to stop the wasteful spending, keep our money and jobs here in Weston County, and support those that support them.   

WCHS is a very fragile system. It can’t handle too many financial mistakes. So please, board of trustees, do your own individual research, practice due diligence, increase your financial and management oversight because if you fail, we all lose our health care system.  

Editor’s Note: This letter was edited for formatting and to conceal the names of affected employees.