Petersburg Borough: Hospital Board Meeting

Additionally, Jennifer Briner was able to complete a draft policy that will allow PMC to be able to serve individuals in need of long term care services while remaining in regulatory compliance. And that policy is ready for internal review. That's it. Thank you. Can I make one comment?

Yes, Marlee, I just want to say the falls report is reviewed every time. If there were any falls in this system that's in place now to help prevent falls. I've been in phone contact with a friend whose husband was recently hospitalized out of state with Parkinson's disease. He fell five times in his first 48 hours that he was in that hospital. And I said, you need to go home and get some rest.

She said, I can't le because he keeps trying to climb out of bed and falling. And I thought that would never happen at Petersburg long term Care. That someone would have fallen four or five times in their first few days of hospitalization. I was just appalled.

Thank you. Critical Access Hospital. Yes. So the Critical Access Hospital quality committee met May 20. The committee worked through action items and project updates.

Receiving temperature sensitive medications continues to be an issue. This also affects the lab when supplies arrive late and have to be disposed of, which also leads to a scramble for Violet and crew. Otherwise forward progress is being made. While Stephanie was in town, a Mountain Pacific advisor paid Petersburg Medical Center a visit in support of the PMC partnership with Midwest Quality Innovation Network.

Focus will be predominantly on home health and the outpatient clinic, but also includes long term care in the Critical Access Hospital. The advisor's purpose is to bring resources to the Petersburg Medical center and assist the departments in developing, implementing and reaching goals that improve the quality of service and quality of care.

Questions on that? Thank you for that report. Moving on to reports, Jolene is. Oh, you're going to talk on Jolene's report.

This is Jennifer Briner and I am here to just highlight Jolynn's report. Jolynn is out of town. Jolynn is our new swing bed. Lightweight. Pharos on 1 6, do you copy?

Sounds like boat talk and discharge planner. And I really just want to highlight. She submitted a really thorough report but she's doing a fantastic job, learning the job, being creative and really looking at some metrics that she wants to start following. As you can see, our census remains two to three. An average of two to three patients or patients a day.

Our goal is like three to four to five, maybe six. But anyway, so she's doing a fantastic job and we're excited to see the progress there. Any questions on that report?

Thank you Chief of staff. Anyone talking on Dr. Burt's report?

Were there any questions on Dr. Burt's report? Did want to ask if there's an update on the direct patient care status and where that might be. Okay. Okay.

Moving on to Kelly's report.

So I'm Kelly Zweifel, I'm the clinic manager. So I was going to talk about direct primary care and I'll get to that in a minute. Just kind of highlighting some of the main things. So we have a change of a new nurse case manager working with us, Kelly Wood. She's working part time in clinic and part time with acute care and she's OB and high risk pediatric case manager.

So we're really excited to have that. We've been wanting it for a very long time, helping with lactation services. And so it's a really great new service that we have. And then many of the other things have been on here like our hypertension quality report that we continue on and our diabetes results. One of the main things we're always tracking our availability in clinic and the type of appointments, how many appointments we have.

And one thing we're focusing on is to prevent or decrease no shows. And we have had it come down and it was really running high but we're lower than we've been all year right now.

So direct primary care is one of the main projects we're working on right now and we hope to be live anytime soon, but I'm really hoping in June. Our goal was April. April. And so we're just waiting on a couple more things, something with the payment and we're waiting on some a bill that we need in Cerner to make sure that everything flows properly to the business office so that they can account for those pat and things work properly. We've been meeting weekly with a big group so it's clinic in it.

There's a bunch of us, I think I wrote it in the report. So it's been a big project, but we're right on the cusp of it. So it will be a monthly subscription where adults can get $125 a month for services for primary care services and a child could be at $80 a month. It's an annual subscription. They can get preventative care, their annual visits, also sick care.

So if it's like ear infection, strep throat, things like that, people can come in and get tested and that subscription would cover those. And it covers some labs more around health fair type labs, but any specialty labs, radiology medicine doesn't get covered by it and it does not cover ER or hospital stays. So this is just kind of like direct primary care. So it's only for the clinic based services and really intended for people who don't have insurance and or have a really high deductible on like catastrophic insurance. So it gets access to the clinic and getting those people in that maybe aren't coming in.

Any questions on that? Yes, Phil, you don't mind if I just want to make sure I mention this each time Kelly explains the direct primary care. The, the rules are not defined by pmc. The rules are actually defined by law. Senate.

It's under Senate Bill 45 from a couple of years ago. So just, just to make sure the public is aware of that. Like those, those things are not, there's not, you know, those are things that, that are in there that for coverage. We're trying to cover everything that we can, but we are legally not allowed to touch. Different areas like that are defined under the Senate bill.

So just just for clarification, those are not PMC defined. Those are legally defined by the Senate bill. Any other questions for Kelly? Thank you, Kelly. Julie for Community Wellness, this is Julie.

Walker, Community Wellness manager and PR manager. I just have a couple updates from the time my report was written, so I just wanted to provide you with those. We started our new Tai Chi class. We have a beginners class that just started since the time of the report and I'm happy to report that We've had about 15 new participants in that class while we continue to have our intermediate class which has about 12 to 15 regular people attending that class. So Tai Chi is apparently very interesting to people and they continue to come to the classes.

So exciting. For our Tobacco Prevention and control grant. The three year grant will be ending June 30th. We did just receive the RFP for the next three year and are reviewing that with Katie Bryson, our grant writer and planning to apply for it again. So it has, I listed some of the key accomplishments of the grant over the three years and I think it's been a really positive thing for our facility and we hope to continue the work.

They've also expanded it a little bit into other chronic disease prevention efforts are going to be allowed under the grant. So that's exciting to us as well. And then lastly the, I mentioned the art, the call for art proposals for the work building. So our subcommittee for the selections did meet have a community member subcommittee and we decided to extend the deadline to June 30th. So that has been extended for Submissions.

The timeline remains the same for installation and completion, which would be October 31st, and having the funds spent completely by December 31st for the grant. That's unless there's any other questions about my report. Those were updates since the time of the report was written. Questions for Julie. Thank you, Julie.

Katie Holmlin for youth programs.

Hi. I just have a couple little updates as well. So this spring, based on some community member feedback and suggestions, our advisory committee launched our sponsor ASCOGEE program. So it's really low barrier scholarship fund. Just trying to give families a little bit more access to reduce financial barriers to enrollment.

And it's been going really well. So far we've awarded almost $10,000. It caps out at $1,000 per family. And then for our PMC financial aid, which is a higher level of financial support, we've awarded almost $8,000. So what that tells us is there is a need.

Our rates remain incredibly low compared to other programs across the state because kids deserve access to outside experiences and experiential learning. So I'm really proud that our community is stepping up. That sponsor, ISCOGEE Fund, has raised just about $30,000 and most of that is from individual donations. So it's really awesome. Huge thank you to the community and businesses for supporting our kids.

Enrollment is open for summertime. We have about 1300 hours of youth programming planned for ages 4 through 18. Lots of different kinds of experiences planned out in summer camps. I will say enrollment is a little slower than last year. So we have enrolled about 81% of the individuals as opposed to last year, but filled roughly 90% of the slots that we filled last year.

So fewer individuals, but they're using. They're going to more programs, which is really cool. So basically, if you're in the community and are still looking to plan your summer camp experiences for your kids, there's still time to enroll. And I hope that people do because we have some really fun stuff planned. And then we obviously drastically increase capacity in the summertime.

Our staffing goes up to a staff of 16, including lots of high school mentors. And 75% of our staff are returning staff members, which is awesome for building relationships with kids. And then our mentor and training program is looking to grow from five kids last year to 12 this year, which is a huge increase. Surprise to Brad, who's going to be running this, but really excited to see kids who are ready to step into leadership roles. And then really exciting that we got to hire former skaggies this year and former mentor in trainings.

Which is like a full circle moment for me. Something that we should be really proud of. So any questions on my report? I have one. You said you were having problems with ccap.

I was wondering if you had contacted the state legislators to help you. Yeah, we're working on trying to advocate for some changes there. Continue to experience some roadblocks. Unfortunately, we're working on it. Fingers crossed we make progress at some point.

Thank you, Katie. Jennifer Wood for Dietary.

Hi, I'm Jennifer Wood. I stepped into the interim food service director role just a couple weeks back. So this is my first. Unfortunately I didn't print out my board report right before I came, but just going by memory what I put on it too. Since I was trained all last year I worked primarily in clinical as a travel worker, but also worked in food service as a backup to Jeanette when she was here.

So the change over to the last few weeks, pretty seamless. Just a little work trying to get everything in place, but pretty seamless that way. We continue to have our employee meal program that's very successful. More and more demand for that each day. So our primary employee meal gal is working hard.

She's also helping to fill in some shifts, but we keep that going and very popular and successful. Worked a little bit with Stephanie Romine on working towards the new CMS guidelines for hospitals for fresh and less processed food. So we kind of starting to get a plan going forward to that. Any questions on my report?

None. Okay, thank you. New facility. It's my understanding that Justin is not available. Yeah, Justin's in flight right now.

Were there any questions regarding Justin's report and did anyone have any comments on his report?

Okay, thank you Justin for that report quality. Stephanie Roman, do you have any comments? Stephanie hi there. Good evening. I just wanted to highlight a couple things about the workplace satisfaction survey that we did in April.

I included quite a few stats there in my report. If you are able to go to the employee forum, this is similar information there. The compared to 2024. In 2026 we increased overall satisfaction for employees from 84 to 91%, which is really incredible. This is well above the national averages.

We have either stayed the same or increased satisfaction in all areas that were surveyed since 2024. And significant progress has been made in a couple areas. So we're going to continue to focus on the great stuff that's going on as well as listening to those that are less satisfied in trying to translate those to meaningful improvements and just valuable stuff coming from the folks out there. And overall the responses Were extremely positive and just wonderful to see. And any questions on my report?

Done. Thank you. Thanks for that report. Thank you.

Infection prevention. Rachel Fandel.

Any questions on her report?

Thank you for that report, Rachel. Executive summary. Yeah. Hi. Phil Hofstadter, CEO, executive report submitted a couple of things that have occurred as usual since the report was written.

I believe that it must be legislative season. We've had quite a number of legislators flowing through Petersburg. And I just want to thank Mayor Lynn for really reaching out to me when legislators are in town, either through Mayfest or when he has conversations, keeping them informed. So really amazing relationship with the assembly in general. So just want to put a plug out for that.

Some of those I mentioned in the report we had person running for governor click. Bishop that was here toured our facility. We actually ended up spending quite a bit of time with I think he's Senator, Senator Bishop out of Fairbanks and he's former. What is he? I don't want to misquote that.

He's Local 302. Yeah. So he was very interesting talking to person running for office and he asked a lot of questions on infrastructure and it was great. We spent so much time talking about the aging facility and he really understood the aging plant and. And Wolf and Senator Bishop had a great dialogue on a lot of those.

Wolf can probably mention that, but that was very interesting. A couple hours we were able to spend some time touring the facility, on the old facility and up at the new facility as well. So really focusing on infrastructure and capital support, which he did support it when we had those conversations. We also have some news that we heard earlier this week that Senator Murkowski will be visiting us tomorrow. It's short notice and I'm very grateful for her to come in.

Just it's a very quick trip. As I indicated to board members and our assembly as well, that we just going to have a tour of the facility. Quick dedication. But really Senator Murkowski has been the one who started the ball rolling with appropriations and very, very grateful for her presence tomorrow, coming in and providing that you know what that funding did. And it's just an opportunity to showcase that.

So very grateful for that. Mary Patola was in earlier this week and had the opportunity to talk with her about capital. She had toured our facility in the past as Representative Bitola and so really glad to see such great support from our delegates across the board. And am I missing anyone? Rebecca Hempshoot was in town.

I didn't get a chance to meet with her. I was invited, but I just could not make that event. But I've talked with her often. She's also very supportive from operations side. We are building out our specialties.

I did have orthopedics individual coming to town. Dr. Hess and I came through and toured the facility along with Jennifer Breiner on what specialty clinic would look like. I'm going to withhold the name just for the time being until we actually get a contract. But I just want to mention that we're continuing to have conversations with specialty services to try to bring those to Petersburg under contract. We also reached out to cardiologists in Alaska as well.

Same thing. To provide some echo or cardiac ultrasound clinics here as a need from our medical staff as a high desired clinic locally. Those are things that are still in conversation but we're moving forward. We're getting some interest in developing those. That's excellent.

In addition to the scope clinics that. Jennifer's been leading the charge on that and having those on a regular basis. When is the next clinic again?

June 24th, 25th. Just amazing. It's so wonderful to have that on a rotation again and developing that clinic in addition to some of these others.

Direct primary care was mentioned and I'm very excited about having that for. So thank you to our staff pushing that together. It's really complicated putting these programs together and sometimes it's not a staff issue. It's a. We're waiting for some technical thing coming from a vendor or some process that we are just kind of.

Kind of on a holding pattern until that can move forward. So very excited to moving forward on that. I do want to put a plug up. Thank you Jennifer Wood for stepping in. She provided a short report but really stepping in seamlessly supporting the staff and the food services and dietary just do an amazing job.

So I just want to thank Jennifer for stepping in and really bringing that. Leveling up that department. So really excellent and organizing the department in a way and just amazing staff in general. So see what else am I missing? School insurance is a new insurer has come up.

They had traditionally worked with a different payer and so I was involved with. Want to thank the school for inviting me into that conversation. It's important because the people who are school members have insurance and we got to make sure we're a network as a. As a primary health provider in town and you know sometimes those decisions get made and we are not aware of that and we have to be in network and we have to negotiate that contract to make sure it's in parity with the other Contracts and I'm thankful for Jason for helping with that as well and making sure we're working through that. It's been a pretty good dialogue, but again, it makes me a little nervous.

We want to make sure that, that these are fair and that those are. That the employees of the school get the services that they deserve. And you know, it's very complicated those conversations. So I want to make sure that just put a plug out that we're working on that very diligently.

Survey. Oh yeah, we got a still on the regulatory side in case you want to know how, how regular. How much more regular. We had a survey. We had a federal surveyor come in to survey the recent survey.

So state survey just. I just leave it at that. And so we have to drop everything and, and the, and, and all the exit of that was amazing. Like when they first came in. It's like you're kind of okay, another, another survey.

A survey is going to survey a survey and at the end of that really complimentary on the, on the staff and the care in long term care. And it kind of echoes what Marlene had mentioned about the falls. It's just, you know, we, we don't see that often. I, you know, if you have a reference from another area organization, you tend to see it. I see it when you, when I've come from a different organization, how amazing the care is here and how amazing the, the community is here with our staff.

And I feel very fortunate to be working around such great staff in general. So it is good care in long term care, hospital care, primary care, home health care. Don't want to forget anyone. Childcare.

Getting there. Yeah. Okay, that's all I have. Thank you. Any questions for Phil?

Yes, Joe. Yeah, thanks. This is Joe. Yeah, I noticed in, if it's in your report, Phil, I think it's one of the others that it's been since November of last year when we've had four physicians. You mentioned in your report that you're.

Actively looking recruiting for a provider to. Fill the fourth position. Do you have any more, any more detail you can provide on the, on. That recruitment, what form it's taking? Yeah, yeah, I can comment.

It's very hard to recruit physicians. Very hard. I mean we need to make sure we treat all of our staff well and our physicians. It's very hard market out there for physicians and to have in the community. So I think it speaks to.

It's not necessarily, it's recruitment but it speaks to the demand and it speaks to the challenge of work, workforce and One of the ways that we have actually worked around a little bit is we have other providers. We do have nurse practitioners working within our facility. So we do have Angela Manish, nurse practitioner, she's been on. We have Eric Kulebeck who's a PA physician's assistant. We also have Seth.

What's Seth Win. Sorry, nurse practitioner, also a provider and they can do primary care. They are they call mid level providers but they do provide care within the facility as we recruit. So we do have three full time family practice physicians, two nurse practitioners and a physician's assistant which is still pretty good access to care. But we are still recruiting.

So challenge. Yeah. We have questions for Philosopher. Thank you, Phil.

Financials. Can everyone hear me?

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. Okay, excellent. So I always like celebrating the patient volumes like going over that first. So it appears as you know, we've seen over the course of time some of our clinic emergency department a little slower during the winter months. But as we get into spring we see it pick up and in numbers are usually fairly strong on an outpatient basis through the summer.

And we're seeing that trend once again. Clinic visits are on the increase for primary care. We also had a specialty clinic. I believe we had our colonoscopy clinic, GI clinic and so that was busy. May have had some other specialty services in the month.

So 966 clinic visits there now year to date. Let me move this out of my way. We can see that we clinic visits are up over the prior year by 4.2% so to almost 300 visits. So glad to see that radiology procedures on par for previous months year to date, slightly up 1.6%. Lab tests consistent with previous months and strong for the year.

I think that's probably due to the health fair and the lab testing we did this year. Rehab services is picked up. I think we have a full team at this point. I think it's a little larger than a full team. I understand there's a husband wife combination and really have a lot of availability for therapists.

So going very well. And home health services up and down a little bit based upon illness and things of that nature. But year to date 2,241 compared to 1800 in the previous. So it's up 20%. Very strong.

Emergency visits 77. We're seeing that kind of that upward trend again as we get into the spring. We always see in the 60s during the winter and then we can get up into the hundreds in the summer with increased number of People and activities going on in the summertime. Observation days consistent inpatient day 17 little lower but swing bed looks like we had about two people in the building every day for swing bed services and had one person in ICF waiting on getting into the nursing home. Long term care services and the nursing home is 281 resident days there a little lighter.

We've seen a little lighter numbers the last two or three months. Not to be too concerned. I think we're seeing 3703 year to date compared to 4010110 in the previous year rebasing year. So we don't necessarily get too concerned about that because or volumes could actually help us in terms of that rebasing and provides us with increased reimbursements for the next four years. Okay.

A lot of great things and it's always wonderful participating in various meetings to hear the strategic planning that is going on and how well everyone is executing the strategic plan and we get to see how that comes about. And in terms of impacting our costs as well as our revenues, we don't worry. You know the costs are strategic because they can flow through the cost report for us in many cases. So looking at our revenues here we can see 2.7 million in gross revenues for the month compared to a budget of 2.6. So that was up 104 and year to date we're running about 400 and let's see here.

To date we're running about 473 above budget and we're running about a million and a half above prior year revenues. So about 6% above last year's revenues. Good to see that contractual adjustments. We can we continue to have a lighter contractual adjustment because we are releasing we anticipate in the Medicare interim rate review that Medicare will pay us. We have increased costs because of the new building.

Some slight changes in some of our volumes and our revenues as we just went through year to date. So we anticipate them paying us some funds. And so we've been releasing a little bit of contractual adjustment there. Bad debts is a credit as we continue to collect on old accounts due to the revenue cycle. Recovery from insourcing.

That reduces allowances that we had out there for bad debts and we get to recapture that. So. And other revenues. 340B is up a little bit. Just a reminder.

Medicare, federal government one big beautiful bill imposed some changes with regards to 340B. So it's. It's not as good as we had anticipated in the previous year we were we were averaging about $50,000 in revenues for 340B. And then January hit in this new program and we're seeing a haircut there of about 20%. And that's kind of nationwide federal grants.

The in kind FERS USE act that's up that those are grant funds for data. And so we have new data services in the work building. And so that grant went up to accommodate for that.

Total operating revenues 2.6 million compared to the budget of 2.3. Once again that that's due to the release of those. A lighter contractual allowance percentage there. And year to date we are about a not quite a million dollars above budget.

And I believe we're slightly below last year's performance. But last year's performance included a whopping $2.9 million for the ERC funds. We did receive half of the ERC funds and we are appealing. I think they denied quarter two and we are appealing that. So looking at our total expenses, 2.2 million 2.241 against a budget of 2.2.

So just. Just $35,000 above budget for the month.

Let's see utilities running a little higher. I think it's just because of, you know, not really understanding how to budget for the new work building. Some repairs and maintenance ongoing, some employee benefits running a little higher than anticipated. Contract labor. So and year to date, our total expenses 2.3 on a budget of.

Excuse me, not 2.3, 23 million compared to a budget of 22 million. So we're above once again the big areas there have to deal with the utilities also repairs and maintenance really at an old building. And we're trying to keep things running there. And then employee benefits and contract labor as we talked about, difficult to recruit. Very important that we're constantly monitoring employee engagement and creating high levels of employee engagement conviction in the organization.

Retaining our staff, recruiting new people. Great things going on there. So net income, the income loss from operations for the month, 386. Once again due in large part to that contractual allowance. Year to date we're seeing 1.3 million.

And investment income. We're glad to see that rebound. It took a hit last month due to the commencement of the Iran, the conflict in Iran. Interest expense a little lower and we're seeing the grants, you know, specialty grants, things of that nature really diminishing. We're really getting to the end of that Project in depreciation is up due to the work building.

And as we're getting to the end of the fiscal year, making sure that we have recorded reconciled all of our depreciation expense for that new building. So year to date. Well for the month the change in net position or net income 331,000 and year to date 4.6 so doing well there a couple of highlights here. On the balance sheet cash is 3.2 million and in our operating account 2.1 million. In our short term investments accounts payable are down.

The facility accounts payable way down compared to a year ago.

Nothing really you know noteworthy here. I always like to kind of compare it to to some different statistics. So our contractual allowance, you can see that for the month is 17. It's been a little higher earlier on. We're quite sure how that Medicare cost report would work out but we're or typically in previous years it's been about 18% charity care, less than 1% bad debt, fairly low operating margin 14% for the month and total margin is 13% days cash on hand 132.

That is absolutely spectacular. This is due to the receipt of the ERC funds this past month for that 1/4 and the strong recovery in the business office. Days in Arnet 38 spectacular days in the air gross 52. I very seldom see organizations getting much or below 60 or maintain below 60. You know I think we're able to do that partly because the long term care services pay fairly quickly because of the clinic but just really shows we we struggled for a couple of years at 82.

We can see that over here in July we were 82, 83 with our previous business office partner who shall rename Nameless in public. But you know our team has been able to get that down 30 days and free up a lot of money that is now in the bank account and is helping us have much better statistics. Looking good. Days in accounts payable 24 so paying things on time. No indications of financial distress.

So not sure maybe Katie Bryson will comment here in a minute on grant so I'll leave that up but I just wanted to to say you know projects we've got going on in the next board meeting we will have the budget for you to review. We are in final edits over the next couple of weeks. I'll be on site the third week of June to meet with Phil and leadership team department managers and solidify that working on policies and procedures, finalizing those for the end of the year, getting ready for the year end audit that will be coming in shortly. Making sure that we have strengthened our internal controls and met that last requirement that the auditors have been commenting on in previous audits. So lots of good things.

And Phil, indicate we're good conversations with the, the network that will be representing the school district. So greatly appreciate everyone in the finance team, great projects that we have going on and supporting the application of these grants for the rural healthcare transformation. I just last comment that I would make is that of course you, you should always be proud and grateful that you live in Alaska because they have their act together. You're, you're probably one of the leading states. You were awarded the most money, but you're also well ahead, at least two months ahead of most states in terms of rolling out the program, getting your the web portals up, getting applications submitted, working through, giving awards.

Many states such as Colorado, Missouri, just barely getting their portals up and getting information rolled out to interested individuals about what this program even is. So a lot of good things. So before I conclude, let me see. Katie, are there things that you wanted to go over here?

I absolutely can. Is my sound okay? Yes. Yes. Okay, great.

Yeah. I mean, I always agree with Jason that we're lucky and proud to be in Alaska. And I think an interesting thing about a program like this is that you see a lot of different ways of deploying the program and because it's rapid simultaneous deployment, there will be sort of a, you know, retrospective afterwards to look at. Okay. Which of these was ultimately the most successful?

Alaska was very fast, very quick on the ball. I completely agree, and really ready to jump on this. However, there are some drawbacks in the approach Alaska took. For instance, they cast a very wide net. They told folks, hey, put as many applications you want in on every subject in every size.

We're not going to give you any guidance on what's too big to fund or what areas, you know, other than the proposal they wrote, which was a great proposal but very expansive. And that's sort of what we're seeing now because we finally got some determinations on the proposals we put in back in March last week. And so if, if you could scroll down just a little bit. Right now we see our normal grants. And right underneath those normal grants are the rural health transformation.

O Sorry, that's a little bit too far. Perfect. Just as RHTP in case anyone watching online who doesn't have access to the packet wants to see the RHTP descriptions. So we submitted seven proposals. I'll start with the most disappointing news, which is the two largest proposals were not advanced on for consideration.

That's our new PMC facility designs. Thanks for the great slide positioning. Appreciate that. And, and Our critical medical equipment purchase and training proposals, those were very large proposals because they told us tell us any number, amount. We were kind of hoping that if they thought it was a strong project but they had budget limitations, they might come back to us and give us that feedback.

It's not what happened. Those were just deferred on to potentially future applications and they're not giving any feedback on why they weren't funded. We will definitely put in versions of both of those in the fall when they open up the 2027 round. And I think because it's our best guess at this point, we'll basically be breaking them out into smaller proposals and kind of hoping that that's the reason that those were passed on this time. The other five, one project, the smallest project, which is our planning project for maternal and early childhood health wonderfully is likely to receive funding.

We haven't gotten an absolute confirmation or a grant award, but we are expecting because it was advanced as a planning project that that project will receive funding this summer and we'll be able to move forward with building up the lactation consulting program and assessing opportunities to further support pregnant and early parenting families in Petersburg. The remaining four projects so telehealth, Behavioral Health, a shared medical office with our independent Critical Access Hospital partners in Cordova and Homer, and our home and Community Based services expansion project. Each of those has been advanced as an implementation project, which means we need to write a full second application for each of them and they will be reentered in a second competitive process. And what we understand is the state intends to fund up to possibly 50% of the projects that advanced onto this second round. So we will see.

They told us we would have the final information on what was needed for next steps on all of those five by the end of May. So we were hoping that maybe that meant more than two hours before the end of May, but I think we're all going to be watching for it tomorrow and looking forward to learning more. So it's truly a grand experiment, this program and luckily we have a really capable and prepared staff ready to put their ideas to the test. Any questions about the Rural Health Transformation Program funding request or any other grants?

Katie, it might be too soon, but do you know what proportion of the available funding for this year was awarded in round one? Well, they, they don't seem to have actually awarded anything yet. I will say there may be some internal projects and of course the state is funding the infrastructure required for the program. The planning projects that were advances planning projects will start to receive award notices in June and then we'll have a sense of that. And the state has promised to be very transparent about exactly who was funded, who applied, who was funded, and in what amounts.

But they haven't told us the timeline for that transparency yet. And it'll be really helpful to be able to look at that. But I especially am very interested in seeing proportionally how things land in southeast and other more remote rural areas of our state since, of course, we know the state considers every Alaskan community eligible for this funding because, as they put it, every Alaskan community serves rural Alaskans. So that's an innovative philosophy and it'll be really interesting to see what, you know, roadless communities are seeing. Are they seeing a.

A strong showing of this funding as they deserve as costs rise, or is that an area for the state to work on in future years? So I think they are very open to feedback is the good news. So we'll take that pride that Jason was talking about.

Any questions for Katie? Thank you, Katie. Any questions for Jason?

Thank you, Jason. You're welcome. Moving on to old business, PMC housing update.

Hello, this is Cindy Newman, human resources. So we are at 20 apartments. We are getting one more July 1,. So we're pretty excited. And then just on another note, not that it's housing, but we are getting.

Materials, a new used vehicles so that. We will get one of the vans. Back, which does have some issues. But Wolf now has a lot of. Help and we're hoping that his new person can fix our van.

The van, the minivan is like a 2006, but it just has problems starting sometimes. So we'll be up to 21 apartments July 1st. And.

Yeah,.

Any questions regarding housing?

Thank you, Cindy.

Next meeting, June 25th.

Good. So do I have a motion to go into executive session? I move we go into executive session. To consider medical staff appointments and or reappointments and discuss any legal and financial concerns. I'll second that.

All in favor?

Thank you. You guys.