The pandemic -- and the financial ruin it brought -- has left no industry or institution unharmed, including the institutions playing a key role in ending it: hospitals connected to colleges and universities.
When the virus that causes COVID-19 began to spread in the Western US in March, medical centers started preparing. Hospitals cleared elective surgery schedules, stocked up on supplies and retrofitted facilities to care for patients with the novel coronavirus. But in preparing for the immediate crisis, rural hospitals worsened an ongoing one: They were running out of money, fast.
Around the country, there’s a lot of gratitude for medical providers these days, and in Santa Cruz, California, a recent anonymous note to the local hospital was no exception. “Thank you for standing up (and staying up!) to care for our community,” it said. “This humankindness is what makes you heroic.”
Even as the novel coronavirus pandemic draws attention and resources to the nation’s doctors and hospitals, the health-care industry is suffering a historic collapse in business that is emerging as one of the most powerful forces hurting the U.S. economy and a threat to a potential recovery. The widespread economic shutdown deployed to reduce transmission of the coronavirus hit hospitals and health-care providers with particular force as they prepared to face the pandemic.
With area hospitals instituting furloughs and layoffs as their budgets shrink amid the coronavirus pandemic, some executives still have received bonuses that were part of their 2019 compensation packages.
A surge in the stock prices of companies developing COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and testing kits has minted at least one new billionaire and boosted the fortunes of nine members of the three-comma-club.