Half of U.S. hospitals will operate in the red without another COVID-19 stimulus package, advocates warned on Tuesday.
That’s according to a new analysis out of consulting firm Kaufman Hall, commissioned by the American Hospital Association. As Congress gets to work following its Independence Day break, provider lobbyists are pushing hard for a fifth relief package to stem the bleeding from widespread declines in patient visits.
AHA estimated that hospital margins would land at -7% in the second half of 2020 without any intervention. And they would have totaled -15% in the second quarter in the absence of government relief, Kaufman Hall found in its trends analysis.
John Haupert, CEO of Atlanta-based Grady Health System, said his organization saw a roughly 38% slide in utilization during the early days of the pandemic. While volume has rebounded, he still estimated that they’re only about halfway back to pre-public health crisis levels.
“We're now still off our baseline by 19%. Part of what we're seeing there is reluctance of patients to come to the hospital or to seek services in emergency departments,” Haupert, a member of AHA’s board, said in a news post shared by the association July 21. “As patients are returning to the ER, many have significantly exacerbated chronic disease conditions—hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure, pulmonary disease—because they have not sought the care they needed.”
Even in the rosiest of scenarios—with COVID-19 cases steadily declining—AHA expects median hospital margins to land at -3%. But if similar surges seen across several states in July continue for the rest of the year, the association predicted a -11% tally.
You can read the full 10-page report from Chicago-based Kaufman Hall for free here.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.