The Lafayette County Board of Supervisors approved several resolutions dealing with Memorial Hospital of Lafayette County staff at their meeting that was held on Tuesday, Sept. 17.
    One resolution proposed to increase the billing position at the Memorial Hospital of Lafayette County from part time to full time, going from the current 24 hours a week to 40 hours a week.
    With the extra hours, the billing clerk will then take on the Lafayette Manor Medicare billing, which is currently being contracted out to a company by the name of SMS, according to the resolution.
    Between $700 and $1,000 is paid to SMS for these billing services each month. According to the resolution document, increasing this position’s hours will also increase collection and coordination of billing efforts for the hospital.
    According to the fiscal note of the resolution, based on the current wage of $12.58, increasing the hours of this position from 24 to 40 hours per week will incur additional wage and fringe expenditures of approximately $2,990 for the remainder of this year, the period of October through December of 2013. Overtime hours were not included in this estimate.
    The county board also voted to approve the change of four positions at the hospital from hourly to salary compensation as well as making a salary adjustment for each position.
    The four positions included the quality/Hippa manager, clinical application/medical surgery manager, lab/infection control manager and the OR/ER nurse manager.
    The salaries of these positions was determined by looking at the hours worked and contributions made for the past four years (two years for the infection control position) and taking an average of those dollars, according to the resolutions presented at the meeting.
The proposed salaries will be effective for the balance of 2013 and the fiscal year of 2014.
    Hospital administrator, Julie Chikowski explained that she believes this will save money in the long run as extra overtime pay will no longer be factored into the compensation of these positions, as they will now be salaried.
    Supervisor Connie Hull expressed concern with the numbers that were presented with these resolutions and said it seemed like the wages were being increased for way more than a 40 hour work week and that maybe the managers should be delegating more of their duties to other employees to keep them to 40 hours.
    Chikowski stated that if she added multiple positions, only then would she be able to cut the positions in question back to 40 hours.
    “I don’t believe we can get them down to 40 hours unless we added a substantial amount of staff,” said Chikowski. “I would need more bodies with more benefit packages and I’m willing to look at that, but you cannot base this on a 40 hour work week because they don’t work 40 hours.” 
    The new salaries will be effective for the next pay period following county board approval.
    The quality/Hippa manager position will now receive a salary of $66,560, which would be about $32 per hour as opposed to the old hourly rate of $28.55.
According to the resolution’s fiscal note this will result in an increase of approximately $2,050 of additional wage and fringe expenses for the period of October through December 2013. It was noted that the increase may be partially offset by the elimination of overtime pay for salaried positions.     
The clinical application manager position will receive a salary of $68,640, which would be about $33 per hour compared to the previous hourly rate of $27.25.
The fiscal note for this resolution states that this will amount to an increase of approximately $3,420 of additional wage and fringe expenses for the period of October through December of 2013 and that the increase may be partially offset by the elimination of overtime pay for a salaried position.
The lab/infection control manager position was approved to receive a salary of $65,520, which is about $31.50 per hour as opposed to the previous hourly rate of $26.19.
According to the fiscal note, this resolution will result in an increase of approximately $3,160 of additional wage and fringe expenses for the period of October through December 2013 and that the increase may be partially offset by the elimination of overtime pay for a salaried position.
The OR/ER nurse manager position will receive a salary of $76,960, which would be comparable to about $37 per hour. The previous hourly wage was $31.02.
The fiscal note explained that this resolution will result in an increase of approximately $3,560 of additional wage and fringe expenses for the period of October through December 2013 and that the increase may be partially offset by the elimination of overtime pay for a salaried position.
All four of the resolutions were approved by the county board with supervisor Connie Hull voicing the only nay vote for each of the resolutions.