Some of America's wealthiest hospital systems ended up even richer, thanks to federal bailouts
Jordan Rau, Christine Spolar 4 hrs ago
Last May, Baylor Scott & White Health, the largest nonprofit hospital system in Texas, laid off 1,200 employees and furloughed others as it braced for the then-novel coronavirus to spread. The cancellation of lucrative elective procedures as the hospital pivoted to treat a new and less profitable infectious disease presaged financial distress, if not ruin. The federal government rushed $454 million in relief funds to help shore up its operations.
But Baylor not only weathered the crisis, it thrived. By the end of 2020, Baylor had accumulated an $815 million surplus, $20 million more than it had in 2019, creating a 7.5 percent operating margin that would be higher than most hospitals profits in the flushest of eras, a KHN examination of financial statements shows.
Like Baylor, some of the nations richest hospitals and health systems recorded hundreds of millions of dollars in surpluses after accepting a substantial share of the federal health-care bailout grants, their records show. Those included the Mayo Clinic, Pittsburghs UPMC and NYU Langone Health. But poorer hospitals many serving rural and minority populations got a tinier slice of the pie and limped through the year with deficits, downgrades of their bond ratings and bleak fiscal futures.
A lot of the funding helped the wealthy hospitals at a time, especially in New York, when safety-net hospitals were hemorrhaging, said Colleen Grogan, a health policy professor at the University of Chicago. We could have tailored it to hospitals we knew were really suffering and taking on a disproportionate amount of the burden.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/some-of-america-e2-80-99s-wealthiest-hospital-systems-ended-up-even-richer-thanks-to-federal-bailouts/ar-BB1fcnd2