Hospitals ill from more bad debt, credit troubles.
 

Hospitals ill from more bad debt, credit troubles
Saturday December 27, 9:31 pm ET
By Linda A. Johnson, AP Business Writer
Hospitals ailing from fewer paying patients, investment losses, tight credit and other ills


TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- Gainesville's first community hospital has been on life support since the Shands Healthcare system in northern Florida bought it a dozen years ago.
Now, because of the recession, the plug is being pulled on 80-year-old, money-losing Shands AGH. Next fall, its eight-hospital not-for-profit parent company will shut the 220-bed hospital and shift staff and patients to a newer, bigger teaching hospital nearby as part of an effort to save $65 million over three years across the system.


Like many U.S. hospitals, Shands is being squeezed by tight credit, higher borrowing costs, investment losses and a jump in patients -- many recently unemployed or otherwise underinsured -- not paying their bills.

All that has begun to trigger more hospital closings -- from impoverished Newark, N.J., to wealthy Beverly Hills, Calif. -- as well as layoffs, other cost-cutting and scrapping or delaying building projects.

More closings and mergers are on the way, industry consultants predict.


For the rest of the story http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081227/meltdown_hospitals.html

Re: Hospitals ill from more bad debt, credit troubles.
 

Nothing new there.

I had a PUBLIC hospital shot out from under me in 1985
and a private for profit go under in 1995.

They are always crying the blues. The for profits guilty of
dumping and the tax supported guilty of neglect.

Like I said in another post, heal thyself pilgrim. Or better
yet, don't get sick to being with.

Adopt the Vietnamese attitude; a hospital is a place that
you go to die. Xin lỗi, nhắc lại được không?