Page 4 - Healthcare News July-August 2020

Critical Condition
Hospitals B
the reduction in services,” said Guy DiS-
Bleed Millions
ack in March, when CO- VID-19 was just starting to crest, hospitals took steps to brace for a potential surge of patients. But while COV-
tefano, vice president of Finance at Mercy Medical Center. “All our outpatient ser- vices — what are termed non-urgent cases, which usually help feed and support what a hospital does in its normal, day-to-day business — has been shorted, leaving us with a great revenue shortfall.”
At the same time, he added, “we still have all our expenses in place, just like any other business. Look at restaurants — the doors were closed, but they still had rent, utilities, all the other expenses, and the employees.”
Through May, Mercy saw a $25 million reduction in revenues due to pandemic- related reductions in services — and plum- meting volume in the ER, a development that surprised hospital officials nation- wide. At Mercy, daily Emergency Depart- ment cases dropped from a typical average of between 225 and 250 to around 100 to 120.
“Those slowly crept back up — we’re at 150 to 180 on a daily basis, so we’re not at full capacity, and there’s a lot of pent-up demand. Our business is coming back, but
in Revenue
from Lost
Volume
During
Pandemic
By JOSEPH BEDNAR
ID-19 surged, revenues slowed to a trickle. “Early on, we realized we needed to
build capacity for a surge of patients so we didn’t get overwhelmed like they did in New York City, so we shut things down early in March — which blew a hole in everybody’s finances,” said Mark Keroack, president and CEO of Baystate Health. “We’ve been gradually returning to prior operations. We always remained open, of course, but it was only a week or two ago that we resumed more elective kinds of cases.”
Many hospitals are doing the same, but the overall losses to the state’s hospital in- dustry are, as Keroack put it, “staggering” — expected to total between $5 billion and $6 billion by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. “It’s a big stress test, if you will, for hospitals. And some have been hit more than others.”
All area hospitals have taken a financial
blow.
“This has been very challenging, with
Guy DiStefano says the non-urgent procedures that were shut down in March typically support the rest of what hospitals do, leading to revenue shortfalls this spring.
4 WWW.HEALTHCARENEWS.COM JULY/AUGUST 2020