‘On A Precipice’: Safety-Net Hospitals Struggle To Survive During Pandemic
PBS' Frontline and NPR launch a special report that dives into how hospitals that serve lower income groups fared during the covid pandemic and disproportionate impact on communities of color.
Frontline and NPR:
Hospitals Serving The Poor Struggled During COVID. Wealthy Hospitals Made Millions.
This past year, the nation's more than 300 safety-net hospitals found themselves on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, which disproportionately affected the communities that safety-net hospitals are most likely to serve. They took on a greater share of the patient burden, even as other hospitals emerged from the pandemic with huge profits, an investigation by NPR and the PBS series Frontline has found, further widening the gap between wealthy hospitals and hospitals like LAC + USC. "Our costs went way up, and revenue went down," says Brad Spellberg, chief medical officer at LAC + USC. "Unlike a private hospital, we don't make money from our [operating rooms]. Medicaid and Medicare do not reimburse at a level where if you say, if we do more things, I'm going to make more money."(Sullivan and Jingnan, 5/18)
Frontline, NPR and Investigative Reporting Workshop:
Why Safety-Net Hospitals May Be "On The Brink Of A Precipice"
Since the coronavirus pandemic began, COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on Black, Latino, Indigenous and other communities of color in the U.S. has put a spotlight on longstanding and systemic disparities in American society. ... “I think we’re on the brink of a precipice,” Dr. Bruce Siegel, who represents more than 300 safety-net hospitals around the country, as president and CEO of the trade group America’s Essential Hospitals, says in the above excerpt from The Healthcare Divide. “Even before the pandemic, many of these [safety-net] hospitals were losing money, and the pandemic is only going to make that worse.” (Taddonio, 5/18)
Frontline:
What Is A Safety-Net Hospital And Why Is It So Hard To Define?
Safety-net hospitals face a number of longstanding challenges thrown into the spotlight by COVID-19, from competition with wealthier hospitals to uneven government support. But another challenge is even more basic: No universal definition of a safety-net hospital exists.Because there’s no single definition for these institutions — the subject of The Healthcare Divide, a joint investigation between FRONTLINE and NPR premiering May 18 on PBS — the number of U.S. safety nets is also fluid. America’s Essential Hospitals, a trade group composed primarily of urban facilities with high levels of Medicaid and uninsured patients, counts 300 members. Other definitions put the number much higher. (Moura, 5/18)
