LOOKING IN ON: CLARK COUNTY

Monday, Nov. 20, 2006 | 7:32 a.m.

For at least a decade, University Medical Center has provided monthly financial reports to Clark County commissioners who oversee the hospital's operation.

But the hospital failed to provide financial statements for the last three months of 2005, according to George Stevens, the county's chief financial officer. Lacy Thomas, chief executive of the hospital, submitted a statement for January to commissioners in May. Since then, the financial statements have stopped altogether, Stevens said.

At Tuesday's meeting, county commissioners will demand answers from Thomas, who, despite the lack of financial statements, has assured officials that the hospital is on safe ground financially.

"Absolutely, I am concerned," County Commission Chairman Rory Reid said. "It has a history of requiring a subsidy from us to operate."

The hospital posts millions in losses annually.

Thomas did not return a phone call Friday, but hospital spokeswoman Cheryl Persinger said the financial statements stopped because of kinks in a new financial management system that the county is using.

That system, however, went online around Nov. 1, 2005. When asked how the hospital was able to report its January finances, Persinger said the hospital did much of the accounting manually. She then referred further questions to Thomas.

The concerns come after publicity over a highly critical county audit of the hospital's decision to outsource its revenue operations, such as patient admitting, billing, medical record keeping and debt collection, to ACS Consulting.

The audit found that UMC failed to properly assess the costs and benefits of outsourcing and lost money in some areas through its contract with ACS.

Auditors said the contract was flawed , including lack of a termination clause and allowing ACS to collect $1 million in fees even though the hospital lost revenue in the deal.

Commissioners are expecting a report from Thomas on that contract at Tuesday's meeting.

A complete annual financial audit of the hospital is due in December.

Clark County's proposed redistricting plan is dead and unlikely to be resurrected until the 2010 Census.

Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald, one of the leading proponents of the proposed mid-census redistricting plan, lost her re-election bid earlier this month to Clark County School Board member Susan Brager.

In addition, Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, who will join the County Commission in January after defeating Commissioner Myrna Williams in the August primary, is strongly opposed to the plan.

The result, according to several commissioners, is that the plan has no chance.

The proposed district lines would have spread the county's population more evenly among the seven districts, which currently vary by more than 40 percent.

Brager, though, said that it might not be fair to remove some of the people who just elected her from her district, although she said she would keep an open mind on the topic.

The plan was controversial in part because it called for a redrawing of district boundaries prior to the 2010 Census.

State legislators, including Giunchigliani, maintained that the county can redraw the lines only using official Census data, rather than county population estimates.

"They didn't have the authority to do that," Giunchigliani said.