The Oak Valley Hospital District Board will continue with Dan Cummins as its president and Dr. Wendell Chun as the vice-president in a decision announced at Wednesday’s Dec. 12 Board of Directors meeting.

Re-elected board members Jim Teter and Louise Pooley-Sanders were also sworn in at the beginning of the meeting. Both ran unopposed in the November election.

The board introduced Dr. Al Gelders as the new vice chief of staff and a new governing board member as Dr. Lee Horwitz moved to chief of staff. The hospital serves the Oakdale-Riverbank area, as well as residents in the communities of Valley Home, Knights Ferry and Escalon.

During the meeting the board voted to pay current CEO John McCormick more than $20,000 in incentives from honoring his previous contract when he served as the chief financial officer for the hospital before taking on the interim role of CEO. McCormick met over 73 percent of his defined incentive goals to meet the payout.

“We still need to honor our contractual agreement,” said Cummins.

Chun informed the group that the disbursement was pro-rated from McCormick’s tenure as CFO.

“When the new contract (for CEO) went into effect, the incentives went away,” Cummins said.

Oak Valley Hospital is continuing to operate at a profit this year with operations up 20 percent from last year.

“We’re seeing more volume in both the emergency room and acute care,” McCormick told the board.

The hospital is also seeing an increase in its charity cases for the year, reported McCormick, who said that the year-to-date write off was over $500,000 compared to only $200,000 last year.

Oak Valley Hospital makes available charity care assistance to patients who receive care who are indigent, uninsured, or unable to pay for needed services through financial hardship.

“With issues in today’s economy, we are seeing more charity cases,” said McCormick. “ER has definitely seen a rise.”

In other actions, McCormick reported that the construction contract with Jacobs Engineering for work on the new facility had been extended an additional month to run to the end of January 2013. Weather issues were cited for the need of the extension that will come at no cost to the district.