MIDLAND, Texas — COVID-19 is impacting everything it seems. Some places that have been hit especially hard are hospitals.
Not only are hospitals in West Texas having to provide care to COVID-19 patients, but they are losing millions of dollars in revenue each month because of lower emergency room volumes and not performing elective surgeries.
Before the virus, Midland Memorial Hospital was experiencing major growth, but the pandemic changed all that.
In March the hospital lost $2.8 million dollars and they anticipate losing close to $6 million dollars in April.
As for May, with Texas slowly reopening, the hospital is hopeful they can recover.
“Midland Memorial Hospital received two payments from the CARE Act resulting in about $5.2 million in relief," Steve Bowerman, chief financial officer for Midland Memorial Hospital, said. "But $3 million dollar losses plus $6 million losses in April, well that’s $9 million and we’ve only had $5.2 million in relief."
Bowerman says the funds are not enough to offset the hospital's losses.
"Those are the losses we experienced in just two months, too," Bowerman said.
Before the virus hit the hospital was performing around 900 elective and emergency surgeries a month.
In March, they performed around 600.
The hospital is still working on April numbers but Bowerman believes they will perform around 50% of what they normally do, so around 400 surgeries.
“It's weighing on everybody," Bowerman said. "Everybody has a job here and the impact of COVID is impacting all of us.”
Despite 'Open Texas' kicking off this month, the hospital projects May will bring losses too.
“I don’t think May will be a normal month for us because there are still patients that are going to opt out of services and push things back until the end of the year," Bowerman said. "There's fear of not wanting to come to the hospital.”
The hospital employs around 2,000 people and has not had to laid off or furlough anyone…just yet.
“I think as we start to go back to work, there’s hope that we will never have to address furloughs or layoffs," Bowerman said. "But I don’t think you can ever say that they’re off the table. It’s certainly the last thing we want to do is impact our employees like that.”
In addition to less elective surgeries, the MMH could feel the price of oil dropping as well.
Bowerman expects less people in our community will be able to afford healthcare and that less people will have health insurance.
All of those factor into the hospital's finances.
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