Despite fears, Colorado's biggest hospitals made money during the pandemic

When the coronavirus shut down Colorado last spring, fears mounted that the state’s hospitals were about to get hammered financially.

In rapidly shifting to focus on caring for sick COVID-19 patients, hospitals paused lucrative elective procedures. Patients skipped usual visits. Hospitals pumped money into buying protective equipment and turning floors into coronavirus units. Estimates for lost revenue stretched into the billions of dollars.

But a new report released by a state agency on Wednesday concludes that Colorado’s large hospital systems ultimately turned a profit in 2020, despite the challenges. The better-than-expected performance was partly due to revenue that rebounded once more normal operations resumed in the summer, partly due to investment income from a revving stock market, and partly due to federal stimulus dollars.

Looking at the national operating margins for six different systems that operate hospitals in Colorado, the state Department of Health Care Policy and Financing found that four of them — UCHealth, HealthONE, Banner Health and AdventHealth, which makes up part of Centura Health — turned a profit or broke even before accounting for stimulus money. When including the boost from those stimulus dollars, two more systems — SCL Health and CommonSpirit, which forms the other half of Centura Health — rose to profitability as well.

Read more: https://coloradosun.com/2021/08/18/hospital-profit-margins-coronavirus/