Local hospitals face furloughs amid COVID-19 crisis

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Hospital workers are on the front lines of this pandemic; yet, hundreds have been furloughed across the state.

"The challenges around treating COVID-19 patients, you know, it’s all hands on deck," said Dr. Timothy McBride health economic professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

It's all hands on deck for those specializing in infectious disease and nurses, but that may not be the case for other hospital staff.

"You could keep them on payroll but you’d basically be keeping them on payroll but not using them," said Dr. McBride.

Dr. McBride says that's why hospitals like Cookeville Regional, Maury Regional, and Williamson Medical have temporarily furloughed or laid off staff.

It's impacted patients like Rayne Counts, who had an elective surgery scheduled for a broken finger.

"I broke my pinkie finger - my little one and I broke it really close to the hand area," Counts explained.

But for her, time was on her side.

"It was either kind of doing surgery then or waiting until about now to see if the hand was repairing itself," she said.

She chose to have surgery right away, but just days later, procedures like her's were canceled because of the COVID-19 outbreak.

"All hospital business is a business that operates on a pretty small margin. Even the very big hospitals," explained Dr. McBride.

It's a thin margin that has become thinner with all elective surgeries like Counts' being canceled. Another thing to keep in mind is Tennessee is one of many states, which has not expanded medicaid.

"If you’re a rural hospital and your margin is pretty close to zero and then you don’t get a Medicaid expansion, you know, that’s going to take maybe your 1% margin and make it -1%," McBride explained.

Adding insult to injury, the COVID-19 crisis has also caused unemployment rates to skyrocket, meaning more patients are coming to the hospital without insurance.

"Then you might not get reimbursed for that so it could take even a hospital that’s got a positive margin and make it even more negative," said Dr. McBride.

The state of Tennessee couldn't have seen this coming, but the question remains, do hospitals have time on their side?

"Health systems have said they’re probably losing money on that part of their operation," said Dr. McBride.

He says it costs hospitals 20% more on average to treat a person with COVID-19 than a regular patient in the ICU.