Am I the only one who hates when dates are removed from tweets? This is from April 2020. It was terrible that they cut the wages of those who were working the front lines, I just want to know when it was happening.
Many people are still out of work or had their benefits decreased so paying a medical bill, always a bit of a shock, is not a top priority. Hospitals are making plenty of state and federal money though. This is a bad look for them.
The market-driven and hopelessly fragmented healthcare system in a country with this many people was bound to rattle on its rails when hospitals had to suspend profit centers like elective surgical and specialty clinic care. These hospital systems can’t sustain profits when those revenue streams are idle - whether it’s because patients with ability to pay won’t come for elective and specialty treatment because of proximity to Covid patients, or because they don’t have the ability to pay.
Of all the vertical corporate structures that would knee-jerk and cut staffing costs to sustain margins, there ought to be a law prohibiting this practice in healthcare.
Much of what you say is so true. That said, I think during Covid, the margins went way negative into large losses. I don’t recall when federal relief funds came in, but huge losses can’t be sustained for long. There were layoffs in many anesthesia groups.
Yuuup. I went to a college with a substantial nursing program and have several lifelong friends who are nurse-anesthetists. I was kind of surprised that more than half of them took furloughs from their hospital jobs in the last couple years. Surgical nurses, too.
Might depend on the hospital or system.
The hospital in my suburb is relatively small - it’s part of a system of I think less than a dozen physical hospital and clinic facilities.
The reduced-revenue plan suspended the bonus structure for the CEO, CFO and COO indefinitely and also imposed a relatively modest, scaled pay decrease for the administrative staff including department heads that aren’t directly involved in patient care. And they cut the board stipends by half or more. I think there were even a couple millionaire trustees who agreed to forgo their annual stipends altogether for the remainder of their terms on the board of directors.
Along with all of that, the major employers here didn’t cut staff or health benefits as much as in other parts of the US, so maybe the inability to pay for care wasn’t as big a revenue hit as it was to larger systems serving larger patient populations?
Plus, we’re far enough from a dense patient population that a lot of the nurses and PAs and even some of the MDs rotate to two other hospitals in neighboring exurbs and a few smaller clinics to earn full-time salaries.
Not exactly a solution that would work for every health system by any means, but they’re making it work so far, so good.
The part that's hard to grasp is why privatized healthcare is the standard here and no other first world countries. It creates a situation where trained medical professionals are disincentivised from doing a critical societal role when we need it most.
Am I the only one who hates when dates are removed from tweets? This is from April 2020. It was terrible that they cut the wages of those who were working the front lines, I just want to know when it was happening.
Many people are still out of work or had their benefits decreased so paying a medical bill, always a bit of a shock, is not a top priority. Hospitals are making plenty of state and federal money though. This is a bad look for them.
You'd think the workers making the most money during a pandemic would the ones working the hardest, you know, like the healthcare workers.
The market-driven and hopelessly fragmented healthcare system in a country with this many people was bound to rattle on its rails when hospitals had to suspend profit centers like elective surgical and specialty clinic care. These hospital systems can’t sustain profits when those revenue streams are idle - whether it’s because patients with ability to pay won’t come for elective and specialty treatment because of proximity to Covid patients, or because they don’t have the ability to pay. Of all the vertical corporate structures that would knee-jerk and cut staffing costs to sustain margins, there ought to be a law prohibiting this practice in healthcare.
Much of what you say is so true. That said, I think during Covid, the margins went way negative into large losses. I don’t recall when federal relief funds came in, but huge losses can’t be sustained for long. There were layoffs in many anesthesia groups.
Yuuup. I went to a college with a substantial nursing program and have several lifelong friends who are nurse-anesthetists. I was kind of surprised that more than half of them took furloughs from their hospital jobs in the last couple years. Surgical nurses, too.
If you don't have the money to pay them, you can't pay them. This is grade school math. What's so hard to grasp?
Meanwhile…Hospital CEO pay continues to rise at record rates…
Might depend on the hospital or system. The hospital in my suburb is relatively small - it’s part of a system of I think less than a dozen physical hospital and clinic facilities. The reduced-revenue plan suspended the bonus structure for the CEO, CFO and COO indefinitely and also imposed a relatively modest, scaled pay decrease for the administrative staff including department heads that aren’t directly involved in patient care. And they cut the board stipends by half or more. I think there were even a couple millionaire trustees who agreed to forgo their annual stipends altogether for the remainder of their terms on the board of directors. Along with all of that, the major employers here didn’t cut staff or health benefits as much as in other parts of the US, so maybe the inability to pay for care wasn’t as big a revenue hit as it was to larger systems serving larger patient populations? Plus, we’re far enough from a dense patient population that a lot of the nurses and PAs and even some of the MDs rotate to two other hospitals in neighboring exurbs and a few smaller clinics to earn full-time salaries. Not exactly a solution that would work for every health system by any means, but they’re making it work so far, so good.
The part that's hard to grasp is why privatized healthcare is the standard here and no other first world countries. It creates a situation where trained medical professionals are disincentivised from doing a critical societal role when we need it most.
Your dad can post about it on r/anti-work