PA Hospital System Critical of State Response
Hospitals critical of state response
https://www.altoonamirror.com/news/local-news/2020/05/hospitals-critical-of-state-response/
Wolf rejects claim administration is not doing enough to solve facilities’ financial woes
The CEO of the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania last week accused the state of not doing enough to help hospitals recover from the fiscal trauma caused by the coronavirus.
“Unfortunately, our hospitals and health care workers are not getting the support they need to manage the long-term financial impacts,” Andy Carter said on a conference call with reporters.
A spokeswoman for Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration rebutted the accusations.
HAP worked with the state in dealing with the pandemic but is now “sitting alone at the table” in hopes of extending that partnership so that hospitals can obtain financial relief, Carter said.
Because of the need to give up elective surgeries for a time, hospitals on average forfeited 21 percent of their revenues over the past two months or so, according to Carter.
The loss has totaled about $10 billion, including the cost of gearing up for a surge that, in many cases, never happened, he indicated.
Moreover, many health care workers have been laid off, Carter said.
His disappointment with the administration centers on the state’s having offered loans, rather than relief money that doesn’t need to be paid back; on Wolf’s veto of a telemedicine bill that would have required insurers to reimburse “adequately” for remote care and on the governor’s executive order providing medical immunity for COVID care — but not to hospitals, Carter said.
Hospitals and other health care providers have been getting lots of help, responded Wolf spokeswoman Lyndsay Kensinger, via email.
That help has included $900 million in federal stimulus money, with additional funding that will be coming from $175 billion in emergency health care money allocated nationally by Congress, according to Kensinger.
The help will also include money from the state’s $3.9 billion allocation from the Coronavirus Relief Fund, which the administration is working with the General Assembly to divvy up, Kensinger wrote.
Hospitals have also received $50 million from the state to buy needed supplies, including personal protective equipment, Kensinger wrote.
And they’ve been helped by the “acceleration” of $250 million in payments from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Kensinger wrote.
The loan program that Carter acknowledged has disbursed $325 million out of an available $450 million, she wrote.
The administration has also worked with hospitals to phase back in their suspended elective operations, with “guidance that will permit the procedures (to take place) in a safe manner for both front line health care workers and patients,” Kensinger wrote.
Wolf vetoed the telemedicine bill because it “interferes with women’s health care and the crucial decision-making between patients and their physicians,” according to a news release from the governor’s office.
Wolf objected to the bill because it wouldn’t have applied to telemedically assisted abortions, according to reports.
At the same time, however, the governor “released cross-agency guidance on telehealth, citing its importance as a health care delivery option” during the pandemic, because it can reduce the potential for face-to-face transmission of infections, the administration’s release stated.
The governor’s immunity liability order was designed “to afford health care practitioners protection against liability for good faith actions taken in response to the call to supplement the health care provider workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic,” stated an administration news release.
It is largely in response to “health care providers (having) to broaden their professional responsibilities and experiences like never before,” according to the release.
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