photo by: Contributed

LMH Health's main campus at 325 Maine St.

Some changes on the federal level could bring more funding to LMH Health, and others could bring frustration, but the hospital’s leaders struck an optimistic note on Wednesday in their first board meeting of 2026.

The LMH Health Board of Trustees met only briefly on Wednesday morning and didn’t have any action items on its agenda. But trustees and hospital executives did go over some happenings in Washington that could affect the hospital’s finances.

Some good news, board vice chair Tom Sloan said, is that the hospital is expecting to receive some funds in 2026 from the federal government’s Rural Health Transformation Program, which has allocated $221 million to the state of Kansas. Although the board didn’t share any details on how much the hospital might receive, Sloan said LMH’s programs were aligned with the federal program’s goals, meaning it could get a decent chunk of funding.

But Sloan said there was another federal change involving insurance that could cause problems for LMH and many of its patients — the expiration of Affordable Care Act subsidies at the start of this year.

These subsidies had been in effect since 2021 and were originally intended to help Americans get through the COVID-19 pandemic. They made premiums less costly for millions of Americans who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. But Congress’ fight over whether and how to extend them was at the heart of the federal government shutdown last fall, and lawmakers weren’t able to reach a deal in time to prevent them from expiring at the start of 2026.

According to the Associated Press, the health care research nonprofit KFF found that more than 20 million Americans who benefited from the subsidies would see their premium costs rise by an average of 114% after the subsidies lapsed.

“>While there is some bipartisan support in the House and Senate for bringing the ACA subsidies back, there are still problems that legislators can’t agree on. But Sloan said he was optimistic that a deal would get done, and he was “hopeful for the new year” overall.

Adam Goodyear, an orthopedic surgeon and LMH’s new chief of staff, was also optimistic about the hospital’s operations. Goodyear said he had worked with LMH for nine and a half years, but that he had heard more positive sentiments “in the past four to five months” than in the rest of his time at the hospital. He said after meeting with new CEO Shelly Kortkamp, he felt good about LMH’s vision and about the “alignment” between its administration and medical staff.

“(There’s) a lot of excitement for the future despite the challenges,” Goodyear said.

Kortkamp was also at the meeting, and she thanked the staff for “stepping up” in recent weeks, amid both the winter holidays and a rise in flu cases.

As the Journal-World reported, the hospital saw an uptick in flu cases around the start of the month, mirroring a national trend. Kortkamp said LMH saw an increase in patients that it hadn’t experienced since the COVID-19 pandemic, and that required staff to take extra shifts and open clinics on planned days off. She thanked the staff for their “professionalism and reliability” during that time, adding that LMH “(does) such a good job in times of crisis.”