POTSDAM — Despite financial hurdles, Canton-Potsdam Hospital ended 2011 in the black and is looking toward another successful year.

In 2011 the hospital made over $1.5 million, even as other area hospitals dealt with financial losses.

Richard D. Jacobs, the hospital’s chief financial officer, credits this financial success to an ever-growing medical staff and the new cancer center, completed in 2011, which has brought in additional revenue.

“We’ve been very successful in physician recruitment, so our medical staff has continued to grow,” Mr. Jacobs said. “That’s basically what we’ve been doing over the last several years.

The hospital plans to continue expanding and recruiting in the years to come. The hospital is planning a $5 million, 20,000 square foot expansion to double the size of its Lawrence Avenue Medical Campus in Potsdam.

Upcoming changes to the way Medicare is distributed mean hospitals will have to continue to adapt to remain successful.

The Affordable Care Act calls for a new bundled payments model of distributing Medicare, which encourages hospitals to coordinate with other caregivers, like physical therapists and home-care professionals, to cut costs and avoid redundancies. Canton-Potsdam Hospital is studying how to best approach the bundled payments model, as well as other cost-cutting measures called for in the Affordable Care Act.

“I think part of being successful is just understanding what those challenges are, and wrapping your mind around the data,” Mr. Jacobs said.

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