by Roby Brock (roby@talkbusiness.net)
After surviving the pandemic, Arkansas’ hospitals are anything but on a road to recovery. Mounting financial pressures from workforce to reimbursements to inflation are leading to reductions in services and access points and could lead to eventual closures of facilities if conditions don’t improve.
Two Arkansas hospital CEOs – Peggy Abbott, CEO of Ouachita County Medical Center, and Chad Aduddell, market CEO for CHI St. Vincent in Little Rock – said insurance companies and federal reimbursements must step up for the state’s healthcare community to survive.
“We’ve seen our expenses, we’re up more than 10%, which for us, our expenses are up over $100 million versus the pre-COVID year, and yet our revenues and volumes are actually down. So you don’t have to be, you know, a finance leader to know that that math’s not gonna work out, and not going to be sustainable,” said Aduddell.
