Texas NFP Hospitals Will Face Pain from Harvey in Years to Come

Keeping in line with my previous blog post I found an article from the Health Financial Management Associations titled, “Texas NFP Hospitals Will Feel Harvey Pain for Year: Moody’s.” In the article, it evaluates the different steps hospitals in Texas took to be prepared for the natural disaster, Hurricane Harvey.  With Harvey hitting towards the end of the fiscal year it puts a lot of executives in a tough position if their hospital had to close or evacuate patients. A lot of hospitals are requesting property loss due to flooding and other structural damaging but those assessments will not be made till a later point in time. While Harvey did do mass destruction to the state of Texas, 95 percent of the Houston hospitals are operational as of last week and all but one of them that closed are back up and running. Those that stayed up and running had to be prepared long before we even knew of Harvey’s power. Employees had to make sure they had a plethora of supplies and resources along with hospital officials having plans for when the surrounding area was 40 inches underwater.

Many decisions that the executives had to make were from past experiences such as installing submarine doors after Hurricane Allison in 2001. Those hospitals that did have property damage are paying close attention to reimbursement timeliness and coverage to budget funds in order to start to rebuild. Not only do the hospital executives that suffered damages have to make difficult decisions but also the executives in surrounding cities such as Dallas and San Antonio. These hospitals will start to increase patients due to the accessibility and resources they have and how they manage the number of new patients is crucial to their success and reputation.

https://www.hfma.org/Content.aspx?id=55882 

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 13, 2017 at 5:41 PM

    Good points...in addition to the items you mentioned, the hospitals will also face a surge of charity cases. So many people will be financially strapped and facing a long recovery for their homes and workplaces.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mark BonicaSeptember 14, 2017 at 5:32 PM

    There are so many things we have to think about when trying to ensure we have life-safety under control. You can't possibly prepare for everything, but you have to try when people's lives are at stake.

    ReplyDelete
  3. MelissaSeptember 17, 2017 at 7:45 AM

    While some organizations have a Calendar year fiscal cycle and will have a little more time to recover, the others that follow Oct-Sept Fiscal years will have a more difficult time financially. I believe that the government subsidies provided under the declaration of a disaster will provide some protection and assistance for the NFP hospitals as well as the tax write off from the increase in the charitable cases. As we have seen on the news and what I experienced the last two weeks in San Antonio; the communities and the state of Texas are coming together and making large donations/charitable contributions, monetary and logistics related, to assist Houston hospitals that were affected. I appreciate you following this event.

    ReplyDelete

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