MU Health Care posts big financial gains; Boone Health improving
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Columbia's two biggest health care providers are showing signs of financial improvements in their most recently released data.
MU Health Care posted a $45 million operating gain for the first half of fiscal year 2025, which started in July. Numbers shared by MU Health Care to the UM System's Board of Curators showed $1.09 billion in revenue from July-February versus $1.045 billion in expenses for its Columbia operations. MU Health forecasted just $27.9 million in net operating gains for that period. While money spent on salaries and benefits came in about $2.4 million under budget, MU Health Care spent more on supplies and hospital drugs than anticipated in the first half of the fiscal year.
MU Health Care is in the midst of negotiating insurance reimbursement rates with Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield. Both sides met on Friday to work out a deal that expired on March 31. An MU Health Care spokesman Eric Maze told ABC 17 News he expected negotiations to continue next week.
Maze said MU Health Care's performance over the last year has been a concerted effort to bring more financial stability to the operation. UM System leaders warned curators last year about the health care operation missing its financial targets and leaving them with fewer days worth of cash on hand to operate. Maze said factors like the new Children's Hospital, Capital Region Medical Center's integration, care denial by health care payors and inflation affected the entire health care industry, including MU. Maze said the ongoing negotiations with Anthem over reimbursement rates are part of the strategy to fix that.
"A number of health care providers in Missouri have folded or are in financial distress at least partly due to these factors and are unable to negotiate rate and contract provisions with some of the big for-profit payors to address them," Maze said. "So, our ongoing requests as part of our negotiation with Anthem are a strategy to protect the financial standing of the University System while ensuring continued investment and high-quality care for patients across the region."
MU Health Care also reported its Jefferson City operations at Capital Regional Medical Center began to turn a profit. Data shows a $4.2 million operating gain in the capital city from $182.5 million in net revenue made and $178.3 million in net expenses.
Meanwhile, Boone Health reported it's steadily working itself out of operational debt in its most-recent update. Records obtained by ABC 17 News shows a $29.7 million operational loss for 2024, which is still $7.7 million better than 2023. Expenses before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization came in at a $10.4 million loss in 2024, which was also more than $7 million better than the year before.
Boone Health posted a positive EBITDA in the first quarter of 2024, but slowly dipped into the red as the year progressed. It suffered its biggest quarterly loss at the end of 2024, which Boone Health spokesman Christian Basi blamed on a nationwide saline shortage caused by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. Basi said the hospital had to push back some elective surgeries in that time to accommodate the shortage.
"Boone Hospital employees did a phenomenal job to adjust our 'fluid management' so that we were able to maintain critical, emergency surgeries at the beginning of the fluid shortage," Basi told ABC 17 News in an email. "Not a single emergency surgery was delayed during this entire shortage."
Financial numbers for the first two months of 2025 show Boone Health once again show the hospital turning positive financial numbers. Boone Health reported just more than $490,000 in EBITDA, slightly above its budgeted target for January and February.
"That positive trend, along with adjustments we’ve been able to make to find some additional cost savings (such as changing vendors for certain areas), we have high confidence that this positive financial trend will continue into the current year," Basi said.
