A new board member was sworn in Thursday night at the Barnwell County Hospital trustee meeting.
Kiffany Perlote will represent Blackville on the board. She was sworn in by attorney J. D. Mosteller. Barnwell County Councilman David Kenner appointed Perlotte.
Board chairman Don Alexander welcomed Perlote saying, “David Kenner has a track record of making great appointments to the board. I am sure you will do the same.”
To start the meeting the board learned that the hospital has been recovering from a lightning strike.
“No financial reports are available,” said Chief Financial Officer Starsky Bomer “because on July 27 the hospital was hit by lightning.”
Bomer said both of the hospital’s backup systems failed. “We had both hardware and software issues,” he said.
Bomer said, since the lightning strike both hospital staff and software system vendors Meditech have been working non-stop to restore and rebuild patient and financial files. Bomer said when the backup files were installed, it tripled and quadrupled accounts. “We had to go back in and rebuild the accounts. We finished the last patient (file) Aug. 25.”
“For roughly ten days we had no billing capabilities at all,” he said. As a result, said Bomer, “the time is coming that our cash flow will be very low – we estimate that will happen about mid-September.
“We have a plan to handle the situation,” he said.
“I do not have any financials tonight because we would not have true numbers to report. Next week we should be able to have accurate numbers to give out,” said Bomer.
Mary Valliant said she has put money away to make sure the hospital could cover payroll. She said she was able to do this by holding back the payment of some bills.
“How do we keep this (system failure) from happening?” asked Alexander.
Both Bomer and Valliant said Meditech didn’t have any answers as to why the backup failed on their side. Internally, the hospital will be modifying its scheduled maintenance to test the back-up batteries. They said they had no indication that the batteries were not fully charged.
Valliant also said she is considering an outside firm to look at the system to prevent future failures.
“This could have been disastrous,” said Valliant. “No one from Meditech could tell us how this happened.” She said they recommended to not only back up information locally but also off-site.
“We back up every 24 hours and send a tape to Meditech,” she said.
“Are they charging us for their failure?” asked Sloan.
 “No,” said Bomer. “They had IT guys working around the clock.”
USDA Grant
CFO Bomer said the hospital has not yet received $1.6 million from a USDA grant and the federal agency is asking for collateral.
“We keep asking them when it is coming,” said Bomer, but the USDA keeps putting the hospital off.
He said they are now asking for real estate or other lien surety items.
The problem is that the hospital is owned by the county and doesn’t have the authority to put up any property for collateral.
In the meantime the hospital board and administration are trying to work with the county to solve the problem.
Hospital honored
CEO Valliant said the Barnwell County Career Center presented the hospital with two awards recently.
The first one was an Award of Merit. “We were chosen as the most supportive business in Barnwell County to their students. This honor is given once a year to the business the instructors feel best support their educational programs.”
The second award was presented from the Health Science Educators. “This award is in recognition of highest meritorious contributions to the improvement, promotion, development and progress of career and technical education,” related Valliant.
Web site and other business
Valliant also reported that the hospital’s new Web site, www.bchospital.org, is “out there.” She asked members to visit the site and give their input.
In other business the board:
 - Learned of plans to hold a joint meeting of the hospital board, the county council and the medical staff for information sharing.
 - Approved a list of strategic goals and objectives to improve the hospital including cost reductions and improvement of patient services. Some of these items have already been completed or are already being worked on.
- Approved a “restraint plan” which details policies and procedures on the use of restraints, both physical and chemical.
- Was advised of staff members who have left, been hired or positions which have been combined. Valliant said there has been a “net savings’ of two positions over the last month.
The board went into closed session to discuss contractual, legal and personnel issues. Don Alexander asked the county council members attending to remain in the closed session.
Returning into open session after 70 minutes board member Steve Sloan moved to terminate hospital employee Rovella. Phillips. The board voted 5-2 to approve the termination. Catherine Mack and Kiffany Perlote abstained.
In a separate action they approved credential of a medical staff member.