U.S. hospitals in less-vaccinated areas are struggling financially as infections mount and stimulus runs out

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Wed, 2021-10-06 09:53 — mike kraft

Hospitals in less-vaccinated areas are struggling financially as infections mount and stimulus runs out Hospitals are struggling financially, with the delta variant surging just as the $178 billion taxpayer safety net winds down. Christopher Rowland Washington Post

The ferocity of the delta variant surge has delivered a serious financial blow to hospital systems in parts of the country with low vaccination rates that are struggling to care for coronavirus patients, even as they combat plummeting income, reduced bailout funds and higher labor costs.

Many hospitals in Southern states and rural areas of the country — even in states with otherwise high vaccination rates — have been forced once again to temporarily curtail elective procedures such as hip replacements that bring in the most money.

Meanwhile, rates of burnout and nurse attrition have soared at institutions with overburdened ICUs and covid-19 wards, contributing to severe labor shortages that are driving up costs for replacement workers, hospital officials said.

Hospital officials had been hoping a semblance of normalcy would return as vaccines helped beat back the spread of the coronavirus. Instead, with huge swaths of the nation resistant to shots, and delta variant driving a large wave of infection, they got what one administrator called a “triple whammy.” Hiring temporary replacement workers drove extraordinary cost increases. Vital revenue from elective surgeries evaporated. And public taxpayer supports to help providers through the crisis last year are drying up.

At Ballad Health, which runs 21 hospitals straddling eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia, the senior vice president and chief nursing executive, Lisa Smithgall, said the hospital system began the pandemic using fewer than 75 temporary contract nurses to fill holes in its roster of 3,500 acute care nurses. That rose to 150 by August 2020, and to 450 in August 2021.

Contract nurses, who typically work for 13-week stretches, previously made double or triple what permanent staff nurses make, she said. Now Ballad is forced to pay up to seven times as much, as hospitals compete to fill shifts, Smithgall said.

With nurses burning out, staying home to care for family or quitting to become contract nurses themselves, Ballard has no choice but to pay the additional wages. Above all, Smithgall said, front-line clinical workers are exhausted and fed up with a pandemic that could have been stemmed with the advent of vaccines. ...

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