Hospitals now need to cut staff, salaries and benefits due to lack of funding even as the American Hospital Association again asks the federal government to get $100 billion in federal stimulus money to providers at the earliest.
AHA President and CEO Rick Pollack said that as hospitals and health systems and dedicated caregivers are on the front lines of this pandemic, they continue to urge the release of the CARES Act emergency relief fund as quickly as possible.
The Advisory Board mentioned that no organization or region has been immune to margin impacts.
Some of the health systems have furloughed non-COVID-19 staff, which includes Prisma Health, Boston Medical Center, Bon Secours Mercy Health and Baptist Health, according to Advisory Board data.
Mercy Health, Intermountain Health and UBMD Internal Medicine, have cut physician salaries. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Alteon Health and Tenet Health have cut down employee benefits.
Beyond the $100 billion fund in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, health systems may qualify for the $500 billion corporate relief fund made available to organizations incurring losses that mar their businesses, according to the Advisory Board. But this access needs executive pay limits.
Hospitals are losing revenue owing to the cancellation of elective surgeries and procedures. Some say that without a quick infusion of cash, they will fail to make payroll.
According to the Advisory Board, health systems are losing 51% of their revenue.
The Advisory Board statistics reveal that for a 1,000-bed health system having two ambulatory surgical centers and $1.2 billion in annual patient revenue, the cancelling of all elective procedures over a span of three months and also a reduction by half of its outpatient revenue, would result in $145.3 million reduction in quarterly revenue. COVID-19 revenue can make up some of the losses, but the impact won’t be felt immediately.
According to the Advisory Board the following steps can be taken by hospitals to minimize the losses:
• Setting up alternate sites of care.
• Establishing credit and coding.
• Documenting as well as possible.