Financial analysts sound gloomy when talking about the outlook for hospitals. More patients are getting care elsewhere, they say, while insurance companies and the government are trying to pay less for every test, surgery or procedure provided. Yet Twin Cities hospitals and the large groups that run them seemed to hold their own financially last year, as the nation's health care system prepared for sweeping changes in 2014 with the federal Affordable Care Act. Eight of 11 health systems based in the five-county metro area posted better operating results in 2013 than during the previous year, according to a Pioneer Press analysis.
