Coronavirus strains cash-strapped hospitals, could cause up to 100 to close within a year

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The 24-bed charity hospital in Louisiana’s small town of Independence lost more than $15 million in 2016 and $19 million in 2017, the latest public data available. Those losses represent nearly a third of the hospital’s total gross revenue.

Then coronavirus rocked Tangipahoa Parish, where Lallie Kemp scrambles to help treat the community’s hundreds of confirmed COVID-19 patients – many of whom are indigent and unable to pay or rely on Medicaid, which pays hospitals less than private insurance.

After the government restricted elective procedures – one of the rural hospital’s primary moneymakers – the pandemic erased $1.3 million in expected revenue. If the quarantines continue through May, that could swell to nearly $3 million.

“We don’t have any profit margin to speak of, so it will be a direct loss,” said Chad Thompson, the hospital’s chief financial officer. “And we don’t know how long this will last.”

In rural communities across America, more than 800 hospitals faced financial peril before the pandemic took hold. Now, they must find a way to treat thousands of coronavirus patients, which could trigger a financial cascade that sinks up to a hundred hospitals within the next year.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/coronavirus-strains-cash-strapped-hospitals-could-cause-up-to-100-to-close-within-a-year/ar-BB13bwG1?ocid=msn360

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1. Two of our three local hospitals closed last year before all this nt