Ailing from the recession, many U.S. hospitals have had to begin making cuts to patient services and laying off staff, an industry survey found. In previous recessions the healthcare industry has held up well, but this time hospitals and other healthcare businesses are hurting. Besieged by financial pressures including more needy and uninsured people, hospitals now are making tough decisions that affect their patients and communities. The American Hospital Association found 22% of hospitals that responded to its March survey have reduced services since the economic crisis began in September. Those services range from outpatient clinics and behavioral health programs to patient education and home health care after discharge.
As emergency room visits in the United States have ticked steadily upward, reaching 119.2 million annually, waiting for treatment has become a central feature of emergency-department care. Patients spend an average of 3.3 hours to be seen, treated and discharged, according to a 2006 report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Filling open nursing positions is no easy task for hospital administrators these days, and there's every chance the job will get tougher. Although the economic downturn has helped some hospitals as many nurses increase their hours and postpone retirement, experts say that any lull in shortages is temporary.
Two bills in the California Legislature would bar insurers from charging different health insurance premiums based on a person's sex and mandate maternity care in individual insurance policies. Women often pay more for individual health coverage than men because, health insurers say, healthcare for women is usually more expensive than for men. In January, the city of San Francisco filed a lawsuit that would prohibit different rates for men and women. That bill is on hold pending the outcome of the legislation. Ten states ban gender rating while two states restrict how much more women can be charged than men.
Forced to slash their budgets, some California counties are eliminating nonemergency health services for illegal immigrants—a move that officials acknowledge could backfire by shifting the financial burden to emergency rooms. Sacramento County voted in February to bar illegal immigrants from county clinics at an estimated savings of $2.4 million. Contra Costa County followed last month by cutting off undocumented adults, to save approximately $6 million.
A higher percentage of the poor and uninsured are being redirected from the University of Chicago Medical Center to Mercy Hospital and Medical Center than the typical rate of admission of such patients to hospitals in Illinois. Nearly 7% of the patients cleared from the U. of C. emergency room and then transported and admitted to Mercy have no health insurance coverage, according to an eight-month period of data analyzing 396 patients. In addition, 25% of patients transported by ambulance 5 miles north to Mercy were covered by Medicaid, which is known for paying hospitals low rates, particularly in Illinois.