The first drowning of the year on the Adair County side of Green River Lake occurred last Thursday, July 28, near the Mt. Carmel Boat Ramp.

According to Adair County Coroner Todd Akin, the body of 59-year-old Paul R. Acree of Campbellsville was discovered floating face down in the water about 50 yards from the boat ramp next to the rocky shoreline.

The victim was discovered by two men who were at the boat ramp area after one of the men’s dog jumped into the water near the body.

Coroner Akin said that he received the call about the victim at 7:08 p.m. Thursday, and pronounced Acree dead at 7:28 p.m. after his body was removed from the water.

Akin said that preliminary results from an autopsy performed at the State Medical Examiner’s Office in Louisville a week ago Friday morning indicated that the victim had drowned.

The case is still under investigation by Coroner Akin and Kentucky State Police Det. B.J. Burton.

According to residents in the area, Acree had briefly lived near Mt. Carmel earlier in the year, but had moved to Campbellsville.

Thursday’s death was the first in the Adair County section of Green River since Aug. 5, 2008, when Josh Hingle drowned while swimming near Arnold’s Landing in the Casey Creek area of the lake.

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When former Westlake Regional Hospital CEO Rusty Tungate, members of his management team met with First Farmers Bank in Danville last year to negotiate a $12.9 million loan to refinance the hospital’s debt, bank officials were presented with an un-audited financial statement showing that the hospital lost a total of $551,234 during the 2009-2010 fiscal year that ended June 30, 2010.

Using this information, along with other criteria, First Farmers approved the loan, and brought in six other banks to participate.

However, according to a report presented to the board of trustees by Spectrum Health Partners at last Thursday’s meeting of the board, the prior management team withheld information–to both the board of trustees and the bank–that would show the hospital’s actual loss in the 2010 fiscal year was almost $9 million more. The total loss project for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2010 is $9,430,000.

Ken Doran, president of Spectrum Health Partners who is currently serving as interim Chief Financial Officer for Westlake said that the huge increase in losses come from three different areas–the overstating of third-party receivables owed the hospital, the failure to show third party payables owed to Kentucky Medicaid, and a Construction in Progress account that was carried over but had been spent to cover the losses.

Doran said that as of the present, the board still has not received the audited financial statement from June 30, 2010. However, the draft financial statement, which was presented to the banks and the board, contains account receivables from a third party that does not exist, and to write down the third party receivables to the actual balance incurs a loss of $1,788,858 (plus the $551,234 reported, for a total of $2,340,487.)

The hospital also owes Kentucky Medicaid $2,372,53 for its three rural health clinics. This money has been accumulating since 2004.

Finally, the hospital reported $4,619,839 in a Construction in Progress account from its failed attempt to add a third floor. Doran said this money has been spent, and is no future benefit to the hospital; and general accepted accounting practices requires this amount to be written off.

In a report to the board about the situation which was also released to the media, the report states, “In 2010, the management team misrepresented the actual finances of the hospital in order to secure new financing that occurred in October, 2010. They clearly possessed knowledge and understood that if lenders knew about the true financial position of WRH, their request would be denied. Critical information was withheld from the board, banks, auditors, and to an extent, the law firm that represented the hospital.”

Members of Spectrum’s management team at the hospital, along with board chairman James Evans, met with the seven banks involved in the refinancing project Thursday morning in Danville, and as Evans noted, “just put it all out on the line,” to show the true financial situation of the hospital.

While the bankers were not pleased with the report presented to them, especially the fact that an audited financial report for 2010 has not been received by them, they did agree to discuss what could be done.

“Right now, Westlake is a distressed asset–it couldn’t be sold–so I told the bankers the best course would be for them to work with us,” Doran said. “They’re going to get together and explore their options and are supposed to get back to us within a couple of weeks.”

Doran said they presented the bank officials with a detailed outline of things that are and will be done to increase the hospital’s revenues and decrease its expenses.

However, another major issue needs to be resolved–Westlake needs additional financing in order to operate.

“Due to the low census (which has dropped to single digits in recent weeks) this has resulted in low cash flow,” Doran said. ”And, it’s going to continue to be this way through September.”

To correct the current situation, Doran said that the hospital needs approximately $4.33 million in additional short-term financing. One million is needed for short-term working capital, $1,933,000 for capital expenditures for the 2012 fiscal year and $1,500,000 for a complete new computer system.

“I’ve been in around 125 hospitals for the last 20 years or so, and this computer system is by far the worst I’ve ever seen,” Doran noted.

In a question and answer session with the local media following the board meeting, Doran talked about the previous management team, the current employees, and some future possibilities.

“The previous management team is probably the weakest team I’ve ever seen,” he said. “But, I’ve also seen a lot of people stepping up since Jan. 21 (when Tungate and the rest of his team resigned). We’re also seeing significant improvements, but it just going to take time to get things turned around.

“Westlake is a gem of a facility, and the people (employees) are the best,” he continued. “The reason this facility is still going is because of the people that are still here, not because of the people that left.”

Doran said that he and other members of the Westlake team that met with the bank officials left with a positive feeling.

“It was a very difficult meeting,” he said. “But, I was very optimistic at the end of the meeting. In fact, one of the banks involved verbally committed to loaning $1.5 million of the total we owed.”