A consulting team has been hired by Grays Harbor Community Hospital to improve operations and has pledged to propose solutions to the hospital’s growing financial crisis within two months.

“We’re looking to identify potential changes designed to help the hospital not just survive, but thrive,” Navigant health care managing director John Klare, told the Hospital District board at its meeting last week. His team has been gathering data since Feb. 20.

Klare said once all the necessary data is collected from the many different services and departments at the hospital, work on solutions will commence.

“There’s very real economic stress in this room,” said Klare. “We need to get this turned around quickly.” He said data will be collected for about four weeks, and once it’s all compiled they have a 30-day window to analyze it and come up with solutions.

Later in the meeting, board secretary Robert Torgerson detailed some of the financial problems the hospital is suffering, including cash balances declining to as low as a 13-day supply, not the 13 weeks they’re shooting for.

Navigant works across the globe helping companies in crisis. Currently they have 5,500 employees, more than 1,900 of those are expert consultants. Health care dominates what Navigant does.

“We focus heavily on our experts,” said Klare. “These people have done the same kind of job you are doing. You can be able to help identify and find real, implementable improvements.”

Navigant took in more than a billion dollars in 2016. According to hospital spokeswoman Nancee Long, “Navigant has an assessment cost as well as an implementation percentage,” meaning the company will collect a percentage of the money they save the hospital. “All said and done this will cost approximately $60,000 a month, minimum.”