News Releases

AHA Advocates for Hospitals as They Continue to Face Financial Pressures

The American Hospital Association (AHA) this week published a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal as well as an advertorial in The New York Times advocating for hospitals, which are continuing to face financial difficulties in the nation’s current economic environment. Also this week, KaufmanHall published their latest report illustrating hospitals continued to experience negative operating margins in 2022 through November.

The letter called out flaws in earlier reporting by the Wall Street Journal and pointed out underpayments by Medicare and Medicaid as well as the significant level of uncompensated care provided by hospitals nationally. In the advertorial, AHA emphasized the ways in which hospitals serve their communities and highlighted the financial and workforce pressures with which hospitals are grappling.

According to KaufmanHall, hospitals’ median operating margins were down 44% through November 2022 compared with 2021, as high labor and other costs continued to outpace revenues. In the Midwest, margins were down 51%. Labor, drug and purchased service expenses were strong drivers in the region.

The fiscal year 2023 omnibus spending bill passed by Congress in December included some helpful provisions for hospitals, including preventing the implementation of the statutory pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) 4% Medicare sequester for two years and extending for two years critical waivers for telehealth and hospital-at-home programs. The bill also included provisions aimed at helping to prepare for the eventual end of the COVID-19 public health emergency and the Medicaid continuous enrollment requirements, as well as measures supporting mental health, crisis care and substance use disorder prevention.

In a statement, AHA President & CEO Rick Pollack said that in the new year, AHA will continue to advocate for Congress and the Administration to take action to address patient discharge backlogs, support the healthcare workforce and increase the pipeline into the future, hold commercial health insurers accountable for policies that compromise patient safety and add burden to care providers, and strengthen hospitals that care for a disproportionate number of patients who are covered by government programs or are uninsured.