Nonprofit Hospitals Offer Less Charity Care Despite Rising Profits

During the time between 2012 to 2019, profits increased from $43.01 million to $58.61 million for nonprofit hospitals, while charity care spending fell from $6.65 million to $6.36 million.

Hospitals use cash reserves to cover capital costs, offset unexpected shortfalls in reimbursement, and earn higher bond ratings. However, allocating more profits to cash reserves than to charity care raises concerns about the mission of nonprofit hospitals.

Unlike nonprofit hospitals, for-profit hospitals’ spending on charity care increased from $2.29 million to $6.30 million during this time. For-profit hospitals had a four-cent increase in charity care spending associated with each one-dollar increase in profit.

Does this mark the beginning of a nationwide trend for hospitals?

 A New Colorado law mandates hospitals increase financial transparency.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a measure that will mandate hospitals provide additional financial information to the state, CPR News reported June 2.

Effective next July, hospitals will have to provide financial details about their acquisitions, plans for construction projects and details on how they move money around.

Sometimes just by shining a light on what's going on with these practices, there's a public pressure created that will make hospitals voluntarily do better in cases where they're not," Rep. Chris deGruy Kennedy, a sponsor of the bill, told CPR News.

As mentioned before, something is brewing that could mean millions for hospitals very soon and we will be making it available to your hospital very shortly.

While waiting for this release, take a moment to use the "sliders" to answer 3 simple questions and then activate them. As a hospital, we will automatically inform you of all of the details as we prepare to launch once you have registered with us, no need to keep checking back here!!!

Larry G. Potter

Your Growth ​& Health Are​ Our Business

Tax Incentives | Expense Reduction | Retirement Plans | Corp. Financing | Smart Medical

High expenses have been placing added strain on hospitals as they try to recover from the challenges of the pandemic.

 

Hospital finances broke even in April amid a continuing trend of high expenses, plus the unwinding of the Medicaid continuous coverage requirement of the COVID-19 public health emergency

Hospitals experienced increases in bad debt and charity care in April. Combined with decreased patient volumes, authors said the data could illustrate the effects of the start of widespread disenrollment from Medicaid following the end of the PHE and the continuous enrollment provision that accompanied it.

As states continue the process of redetermination, these trends will likely continue.

Monitoring patients with congestive heart failure for costly and dangerous complications, like fluid accumulation, could soon be as easy.

 

Israel-based health technology company Cordio Medical, along with AstraZeneca and Spain’s Bellvitge University Hospital, are piloting HearO, a smartphone application that uses artificial intelligence to detect heart failure warning signs in a patient’s speech patterns and notify their doctor weeks before a cardiac event occurs.

“We took this known clinical phenomenon and just turned it into something that can be measured objectively [by] looking at electrical signals created by speech, captured by microphones on off-the-shelf mobile devices,” said Cordio CEO Tamir Tal.

The pilot will examine patient compliance with HearO and the software’s notification of potential heart failure events over six to nine months.

States encourage hospital mergers but the feds are casting wary eye..

 

As federal policymakers step up oversight of hospital mergers, more states are taking steps to encourage consolidation in the industry — or to have the final say on whether such moves are anti-competitive.

The policies are a sign of the power some hospital lobbies continue to wield in statehouses, where they've argued mergers are a way to expand the patient base and keep otherwise unprofitable facilities open.

State sovereignty is in play in these discussions, especially around the question of whether states have the authority to exempt hospitals from federal antitrust scrutiny.

Research shows that acquisitions can keep rural facilities open, but that facilities usually wind up cutting services that community members rely on. Mergers can also slow wage growth for health care workers.

Harold Miller, president of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform said "there are other ways for rural hospitals to be paid more by health plans or have access to more capital."

Unionize???

 

After facing harsh workplace conditions while caring for Covid-19 patients at the height of the pandemic—such as working 24-hour shifts without adequate protective gear—a rising number of healthcare workers are looking to unionize.

In 2021, 13.2% of healthcare workers were unionized (so that’s about 2.4 million people). That number hasn’t changed much in the past 12 years, according to a December 2022 study published in JAMA from Harvard and the University of Washington researchers. But amid “crisis levels” of worker burnout post-pandemic, experts are starting to see an increased interest in unionization!

646 hospitals at risk of closure!!

 

Yes, there are 646 rural hospitals at risk of closure due to financial issues, comprising around 30 percent of all rural hospitals in the U.S., according to the Center for Healthcare Quality & Payment Reform.

The hospitals face losses on patient services as health plans aren't paying enough to cover the cost of care delivery. The losses will likely increase as inflation and workforce shortages persist, according to the report, which was released in April. While rural hospitals are receiving some support through grants, local tax revenues or other profits, they still have low financial reserves and remain at risk.

More than half the states in the U.S. report 25 percent or more of their rural hospitals are at risk of closure, and more than 200 hospitals nationwide are at immediate risk of closing.

There is help for many though!!