Hospitals shutting down, unable to stay financially afloat

Many hospitals across the country are closing down in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic due to financial troubles. With elective procedures being cancelled, due to government mandate, their revenues have declined. Many of these hospitals were already operating on the brink without much of a surplus before the pandemic.
These elective procedures are big money-makers for the hospital.

Well think about it, with critical procedures, you have to treat patients who may not be able to fully pay you back, so the overall profitability is not high. But with elective procedures, it's the people who have the money that are your patients.
If I can use an analogy, it's a little like the difference between the fresh produce section of a grocery store and the wine section. The store is not really making any profit margin from the produce section, but it's kind of something they have to have. But they are making huge profit margins off the alcohol.

Most of the hospitals shutting down right now are smaller hospitals in more rural areas, since we all know it has been the rural areas of the country that are financially struggling more.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/21/us/coronavirus-rural-hospitals-invs/index.html

I think this may be one sign of declining standards of living across the country. We all know that hospital facilities relative to the population is one sign of a high standard of living country, and that Third World countries have fewer hospitals relative to the size of their population.

When a hospital in some of these areas closes down, it can leave the people in that area without care. Longer commuting times will result in more people dying, since the time it can take to get to a hospital during an emergency is longer. Imagine having a heart attack and the ambulance ride taking three hours.
Some people with chronic medical conditions may have to pick up and move, to locate closer to commuting distance to a hospital.
It can also lead to a cascading failure type effect, as poor people who would have gone to the hospital that is now closed instead go to surrounding hospitals, putting more pressure on those hospitals, which in turn can make them more likely to close as well.

 

Lockdown lunacy kills.

 

Apparently hospitals in California are financially struggling as well:

California hospitals struggle financially after preparing for COVID-19 surge that never came

California, anticipating a deadly surge in cases, ordered hospitals to shut down routine procedures and called in thousands of health care workers to help patients.

But the predicted surge never came.

And the cost of all that preparation - setting up field hospitals, doubling the number of intensive care rooms, purchasing protective equipment - dealt a blow to hospital bottom lines, while the ban on all non-emergency procedures cut revenues in half.

The measures drove hospitals in the most populous U.S. state close to bankruptcy, costing them as much as $14 billion and forcing them to lay off of thousands of health care workers, according to the California Hospital Association.
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The hospitals are now asking the state for money, but the state doesn't have any. The state has been struggling with its own finances over the last decade, and is in a lot of debt.

 

The economic ripples of the knee jerk reaction shutdown will linger for years.

Thanks lefties.

 

Isn't this all what the alt-lefties really want?

 

Where there ain't no profits there ain't no life worth living.

 

We were already losing hospitals before this virus.

We no longer have individually owned hospitals in my state as they were replaced by chain hospitals. We once had 3 hospitals in the local town here. A county hospital and two private owned , one owned by three local doctors. Now just one big one , a corporate owned chain. No competition. Like all business the concentration into fewer hands. Getting rid of competition.

 

Private hospitals are like others businesses. No profit - no hospital. You cannot complain about public healthcare and then complain about lack of hospital access in certain areas at the same time. You need to choose a lane.

 

We can complain about hysterical reactions to Covid causing hospitals to go broke. The media touts a couple of hospitals in the entire country full of Covid cases and makes it look like that’s the norm when the reality is the vast majority of hospitals are sitting empty.

 

As long as hospitals are required to treat people who can't or won't pay for the cost of their treatment what you think's gonna happen? Oh I get it socialism, that's the big solution to everything I've been hearing about.

 

We've been defunding hospitals for years and all of a sudden when something happens to them that causes them to shutdown the free market now decides they're no longer needed?

Yeah, sure this is the left's fault.

 

Why are the hospitals sitting empty? Have they cancelled all their electives? Maybe, without any covid patients, they should reschedule them...

 

Which means they are going broke.

 

It sure is, they demanded everyone get free or low cost healthcare, and of course being good lefties they expect someone else to pay the tab, someone like the hospital.

 

I live in a very rural area and we have one semi private hospital, they are privately owned but receive some funding from the county and state, an ongoing joke around here is it's a good place to go and die.

They have a high turnover rate due to the fact a lot of locals go to work there to get time to become certified, once they are certified they resign and go to work for one of the hospitals in Lee or West Palm Beach, as such the staff is largely under trained interns and because of that the quality of service stinks.

Earlier this year they advised the Board of County Commissioners if they didn't receive additional funding they would be forced to close their doors, the County is already reeling and running out of money due to the lack of sales tax funding due to the CV-19 shutdown and cannot provide the hospital with any funding, nor less more funding, so they will close their doors.

That leaves everyone in the county two choice,s go over to Lee County, 52 miles West or go to Palm Beach County 61 miles East, that's a long drive either way and a long time to get to the ER for a critically injured person riding in the back of an ambulance.

One of the problems the Director spoke about is Obama Care, it pays so little they lose money treating people who are insured within the marketplace.

The free or low cost healthcare Obama Care was supposed to supply is resulting in no local healthcare for anyone out here, what a screw up it has become.

 

This is very true. I know some people in hospital administration and they all say the same thing. Covid fear is overblown.

 

Many states mandated the cessation of elective surgeries. Hospitals had no choice but to comply or they would lose their license

 

Yes, and most of the states have now lifted that mandate. There should be a backlog of electives that will get that money rolling back in...

 

Very true, that is if those people wanting the surgery haven't been put in a money bind due to the lock down and are now delaying those surgery's until they can get back on their feet.

This idiotic lock down has done so much collateral damage it's disgusting and very painful for too many people, I know of three business's that have closed their doors in La Belle, which is a microscopic town, I can only imagine the damage the lock down did in larger cities.

 

Or you could stop thinking that hospitals are for profit business.
Here we collectivelly pay for the health services, including hospitals, so none get closed due to a lack of funding. You can still go to a private clinic if you want to and have the money.
Maybe scrap one of your super carrier and inject that money in a service that is more useful to the citizens like a couple of hospitals...

 

Wouldnt be a problem if we had nationalized healthcare. It would actually be a good thing cause we'd be spending less money.

 

Where is "here"? In America we need a thriving for profit healthcare to advance R&D and treatments. The Covid Vaccine is a good example of why we need the top medical centers in the world.

 

Incorrect, many hospitals are for profit and some of them are the best in the nation.

 

R&D and treatments are being done in all first world countries, all of them beside the USA do it via a public healthcare system. And we get better prices than you do also!

 

Nope, that would result in a lower level of service and higher costs, the government couldn't run a hot dog truck successfully, what makes they could run healthcare any better.