photo by: LMH Health

LMH Health, 325 Maine St., is pictured in May 2021.

Compared with 2020, LMH Health’s finances were healthier overall, according to the hospital’s 2021 annual report.

LMH Health ended 2021 with more than double the net income it had on hand the previous year — nearly $10 million to end 2021, compared with the roughly $4 million left at the end of 2020. Though the hospital received more income from COVID-19 funding in 2020 and spent nearly $30 million more on its operating expenses last year, it ended the year in a healthier financial position.

LMH Health is a nonprofit organization, but strives to have revenues exceed expenses, which are then invested back into the hospital or kept in reserve funds.

Other highlights of the annual report include the hospital’s pandemic response; it played a part in Douglas County’s Unified Command team, which demobilized at the beginning of the month after more than two years of guiding the county’s response to the pandemic, and helped support vaccination efforts in partnership with Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health.

The annual report also highlights LMH Health’s collaboration with the University of Kansas Health System. The strategic clinical relationship has resulted in expanded sports medicine care and advanced maternal and fetal medical care for women and babies prior to, during and shortly after pregnancy.

Finally, the report highlights LMH Health’s ongoing push for philanthropic support to expand its cancer center, which now services approximately 16,000 patient encounters a year. The center is still operating from the same space it opened with in 2000, however, and the hospital is aiming to raise between $9 million and $11 million for the cost of the initiative.