Amid Coronavirus Distress, Wealthy Hospitals Hoard Millions

(By Jordan Rau for Kaiser Health News)

Inova Health System, with campuses in some of the wealthiest suburbs of Washington, D.C., and Truman Medical Centers, a safety-net hospital in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, have little in common. But, today, they are confronting the same financial plague: mass cancellations of nonessential surgeries that are their biggest moneymakers while bracing for an expensive onslaught of coronavirus patients.

Yet Truman has less than a month’s worth of cash reserves to keep it afloat while Inova entered the outbreak with enough money to operate for at least 21 months, according to Inova’s financial disclosure for 2019, before the stock market decline. At that time, Inova told its bondholders it had $3.1 billion in investments it could liquidate within three days. Tapping any of that may never be necessary because Inova also drew down its entire $238 million line of credit earlier this year to prepare for the pandemic.  Continue reading article here…

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation

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