I am having a difficult time formatting time in my mail merge document.

I have a column in my excel database database "starts". It contains a date value formatted as "h:mm AM/PM"

In my mailmerge document, I wish to use "starts" as a mail merge field to display time in the same format. I have used this:
{MERGEFIELD "STARTS" \@"h:mm AM/PM" }

But this just gives me decimals in my maile merged document.