Erlanger Health System is at a $1.3 million loss after the third quarter of the fiscal year, but officials said there was a significant non-recurring cost for training for the new EPIC electronic medical records system.
For the third quarter itself, there was a $4.4 million positive bottom line for total net income.
Britt Tabor, finance director, said the hospital is nearing the period where many of the bugs in the system will have been ironed out. He said Erlanger will then begin "to add the bells and whistles that were not installed initially."
Mr. Tabor said EPIC allows more than one hospital employee to work on a particular account at one time, while under the former Envision system there could be only one at a time.
He said the new system is kicking out bills that are not complete. Officials are going through to get those corrected.
Mr. Tabor said there initially were 15,000 work issues with EPIC, but those have been pared down to under 1,000.
The system includes 30 million lines of coding, it was stated.
Officials said hospital admissions "remain strong." The quarterly surgical inpatient volume was 6.1 percent greater than the prior year.
Inpatient heart surgeries were 180.5 percent greater than the prior year. It was noted that Erlanger formerly was at #3 in the local market for cardiac, but has put on a push with the opening of the Heart and Lung Institute.
Mr. Tabor said the heart procedures are among the most lucrative businesses for the facility.
Orthopedic inpatient surgeries were 9.7 percent greater than the prior year.
Neurosurgery inpatient surgeries were 4.6 percent down.