Jackson Health posts $1.9M loss in March

Jackson Health System is showing some short-term financial improvement, but huge problems will come next year because of cutbacks made in the just-concluded session of the Florida Legislature, executives said Thursday. At an unusual public meeting intended to bridge the change from the system's old governing board to its new one, four members of the new Financial Recovery Board heard that Jackson lost $1.9 million in March ? its best monthly performance for the fiscal year that started Oct. 1. "We have a long way to go," said Marcos Lapciuc, a new board member, "but this report looks positive." Patient admissions were up, reversing a long-standing trend, and staff did an "extremely strong" job of collecting from insurers, said CFO Mark Knight. Sales tax collections, which declined in the recession, continue to bounce back. Jackson now anticipates collecting about $15 million more in taxes this fiscal year than it anticipated.