During times of financial downturns hospitals tend to aggressively cut back on both planning and the execution of overall strategy, KaufmanHall observes. This approach seems to make governance and management sense: why would your organization spend future dollars when present dollars and current profitability are dramatically challenged?
Circumstances in the post-Covid era appear to be no different. How do we know? In the first half of calendar year 2019 total hospital debt issuance was $12 billion. In the first half of calendar year 2022 total hospital debt issued was $19.3 billion. Financial performance across the hospital board in 2022 was “awful” and by the second half of calendar 2022, total hospital debt issued was only $9.6 billion and the amount of debt issued in the first half of calendar 2023 fell further to $8.7 billion. Read more.
