Memorial Hospital and Manor Authority members received several pieces of good news at Tuesday’s board meeting.

The key financial indicators for the month of November reflect a net income of $438,442, and many “green” numbers show up in more categories on the chart.

Hospital CEO Jim Lambert called November “A positive month,” commenting that he hopes they are now on the right path 

He also announced that the Bainbridge Hospital was recently ranked the number one medium sized hospital in the state by Georgia Trend magazine. Georgia Trend is a monthly business magazine covering business and finance in Georgia.

Hospital rankings were based on those hospitals that participate in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). A total performance score is used to rank the hospitals in each group using information on clinical process, patient experience, outcome and efficiency, based on the CMS data.

The Authority viewed a new video recently developed to act as a visual tour of the different departments of Memorial Hospital, including the Manor and Willow Ridge.

It was created for the use of the Taurus people coming into the county, and can be adapted for other uses, as well.

Another announcement from Lambert was that the hospital is in the process of outsourcing the business office and medical records to the Xtend Corp. The current Memorial employees in those departments will be retrained as employees of Xtend. He reported he thought the employees were taking it favorably.

Another item discussed was the tele-nephrology project, the goal of which is to try to keep local dialysis patients in our community. Positive meetings with the Thomasville providers have been reported.

Also underway is a program to help people break away from their opioid addictions. They spend three days in the hospital before going on to a rehabilitation facility. They currently are working with three to five patients per week. It is required that they are covered under either Medicare or Medicaid.

The Georgia Hospital Association sent representatives to Bainbridge recently to  work on an article about how the Memorial staff coordinated with the city, county  and other agencies to care for patients and community members during Hurricane Michael.