Source: NewsWise.com
Postponement of nonessential surgical procedures early in the coronavirus pandemic not only disrupted surgical care at U.S. hospitals, but also took away a large portion of hospitals’ total income, results from two studies reveal. These findings (from the two studies, which took place at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) were presented at the virtual American College of Surgeons (ACS) Clinical Congress 2021.
Surgical services are typically an important financial engine for hospitals, and the new study findings showed that curtailing surgical procedures for even two months can seriously impact a hospital’s financial security. Most elective, nonurgent operations in the country stopped from mid-March to early May 2020, to conserve resources for patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Results of one study found that this two-month suspension cost a single university health care system 42 percent of its net revenue for five months.
Nationwide, hospitals lost $1.53 billion from missed elective pediatric procedures alone, the other study investigators estimated as part of their study, for approximately the same period, March to May 2020. Hospitals were slow to make up the surgical backlog and the lost income from children’s operations, with a median, or middle, time to recovery of one year, the investigators estimated.
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