A recent American Hospital Association survey confirms what many industry analysts and journalists have been reporting for months: The economic downturn is hitting hospitals hard as many patients struggle to pay their medical bills or put off care altogether.
The number of emergency visits by uninsured patients is on the rise while lucrative services, such as screening colonoscopies and elective day surgeries, are declining, the March 2009 survey shows. Nearly 60% of hospitals reported a moderate to significant decline in elective procedures compared with a year ago. Those numbers are similar to an Outpatient Surgery Magazine survey, also conducted in March, in which 58% of readers said surgery volumes were down due to the struggling economy.
"It’s almost a perfect storm," says Erica Drazen of CSC, a hospital consulting firm, in the Boston Globe. "Elective admissions are down, people with insurance coverage are down, donations are down and investment income [from hospitals] are down."
Nine out of 10 hospitals told AHA they’ve made cutbacks, slashing administrative expenses, capital expenditures, staff and services, to address declining revenues. The number of mass layoffs at hospitals more than doubled in February from a year ago. Only about 12% of OSM readers said they’ve had to layoff staff to deal with the downturn; 45% said they’ve postponed or delayed capital equipment purchases.
See OSM’s April cover story, "Economy Got You Down?", for more results of the reader survey and perspectives from ASC and HOPD administrators. The AHA survey, which yielded 1,078 responses from community hospital CEOs across the country, is available for download here.
—Irene Tsikitas
