How Hospitals and PAC Providers can Optimize Care and Recover from COVID-19 Economic Damage in the Process

During the COVID-19 pandemic, acute and post-acute care (PAC) providers have experienced their own unique crises.

In acute care, providers have scrambled to find available ICU beds, physicians and critical care resources. Simultaneously, PAC providers have valiantly fought the virus’s spread among their vulnerable residents, so those critical care resources would not be required.

While the arrival of vaccines has helped alleviate some of the capacity and resource issues, acute and post-acute care providers now jointly share another major challenge: economic devastation. In addition to an estimated 55.6% drop in operating margin in 2020, hospitals are expected to lose as much as $122 billion in 2021 due to COVID-19, while 65% of nursing homes are operating at a loss.