Page 5 - Healthcare News July-August 2020

FUTURE MINDED.
EXPERIENCED BASED.
For 72 years, MBK has provided the knowledge and resources to help our clients, colleagues and community grow and thrive. We have the depth to provide a quality team for every client, the drive to deliver excellent service every time and the experience to achieve our clients’ accounting
and financial goals.
413-536-8510 | mbkcpa.com
We’ll help guide your practice
like it’s our practice.
Meet our team bankatpeoples.com/businessteam Member FDIC/Member DIF bankatpeoples.com
JULY/AUGUST 2020 WWW.HEALTHCARENEWS.COM 5
we lost a lot of revenues.”
Joanne Marqusee, president and
CEO of Cooley Dickinson Hospital, said the hit has been significant. Through May, the facility recorded a loss of $18 million, partly due to COVID-related costs, but mostly because of lost volume. That num- ber would be worse if not for $5.5 million in federal support.
“But that in no way covers our losses,” she added, noting that
the time being.
While that move shaves some
costs while protecting lower-paid employees, it doesn’t make nearly enough of a dent, Marqusee noted. “So we’re looking at ways to fur- ther reduce expenses. But the work we’re doing already will certainly have an impact.”
DiStefano said Mercy has also had to take steps like furloughs and reducing hours to mitigate
we didn’t hold off because we saw it was absolutely important to be financially viable because we don’t have a parent company to spot us money,” he told HCN, adding that many furloughed employees took advantage of the $600 federal boost in unemployment and wound up bringing in more than they did while working.
“That helped reduce expenses significantly,” he added, noting that almost 170 of 250 furloughed employees were back at the start of July, with another 80 to 90 ex- pecting to return at month’s end. “Then MassHealth stepped in and
allocated $11.8 million over four months to cover some of the losses, and we got a one-time payment from the feds of about $3 million. Add it all up, and through May, our losses were roughly $3 million — not insignificant, but we were able to survive it.”
Dollars and Sense
Baystate is surviving, too, Kero- ack said, emphasizing the impor- tance the health system has not only on its 12,000 employees, but on the region, where it has an an-
Please see Hospitals, page 7
Joanne Marqusee says she hopes patient volume returns not because of the revenue issue, but because patients shouldn’t forgo necessary care.
Cooley Dickinson Health Care could see a revenue shortfall of well over $30 million for the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30.
“We’re now planning for a fiscal- year 2021 budget and considering
a number of measures to mitigate some of this — things like hir-
ing freezes and reducing a lot of discretionary expenses. Everywhere we can hold off on spending, we have,” she went on, noting that service hours could be temporarily curtailed in some services, while employees making more than $26.50 per hour will forgo raises for
the losses. “We did everything we could to help employees keep their benefits in place. But employees are the number-one cost of a typical hospital — about 50% to 60% of the cost structure.”
Holyoke Medical Center has been losing roughly $6.5 million per month since services were curtailed back in March, President and CEO Spiros Hatiras said. But the com- munity hospital did take some steps early on to gird against the damage.
“We were probably the first hos- pital in the area to furlough folks;