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> Hospitals make ridiculous profit. What's interesting about this is that around 75% of hospitals in the US are actually non-profit. Source: https://www.kff.o
by KoftaBob 5y ago
> Hospitals make ridiculous profit.
What's interesting about this is that around 75% of hospitals in the US are actually non-profit.
Source: https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/hospitals-by-ownership/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/hospitals-by-owner...
All this ends up meaning is that any revenue above their expenses is plowed into hiring more and more administrative staff and building new facilities.
- huitzitziltzin 5y agoI’m a health economist who works on hospitals. There is a long-standing question in our literature about whether non profit and for profit hospitals actually act differently. My sense has always been no. You also leave out one important place for “extra” money to go: salaries within the hospital.
- seibelj 5y agoThere are many who work in non-profits with high 6 or 7 figure salaries. Seems like profit to me! Back in 2015 the president of Boston University raked in $2.5 million https://www.bostonmagazine.com/education/2017/12/11/boston-university-president-salary-2/ https://www.bostonmagazine.com/education/2017/12/11/boston-u...
- KoftaBob 5y agoThat's only 50 students worth of tuition for that year, or 0.3% of tuition brought in that year. While $2.5M is obviously a lot of money, it's a drop in the bucket in terms of how much the university brought in. For universities and hospitals, it's not the high salaries of a few execs, it's the massive amounts of administrative staff. For the larger hospital systems, several thousand admin staff making 60-70k+ adds up to waaaaay more than the fat paychecks that a dozen execs make. It's basically a snowball effect. Execs get bonuses for bringing in more revenue, but it's a non-profit so they have to spend it somewhere, so they expand admin and build facilities, rinse repeat.
- lrem 5y agoNaive question: what if instead admin they would expand actual medical staff?
- tastyfreeze 5y agoThat facility may not need more medical staff. Jobs can always be created for administrative purposes. Have any tasks you dont like doing that you have to do with some regularity? Higher somebody to be in charge of that task.
- lrem 5y agoI'm not familiar with the US hospitals... But pretty much everywhere else I've seen the doctors and nurses being seriously overworked. Is this different on the other side of the pond?
- tastyfreeze 5y agoFrom what I have seen at hospitals in the US the doctors and nurses being overworked doesn't really have anything to do with a shortage of staff. It is more the culture of the business. Hospitals could hire more nurses and doctors and work normal 8 hour shifts. But, a large percentage of medical errors happen at shift changes so there is pressure to have less shift changes.
- tyoma 5y agoThe hospital system in the article (Scripps), is indeed a non-profit. They even have posters and mailers asking for donations.
- tastyfreeze 5y agoNon-profit does not mean that hospitals aren't out to make money. It only means there is some restriction on where the extra money goes.
- colechristensen 5y agoAll non-profit means is money doesn’t go to investors. And considering tax and fringe benefits going to “donors” even that is somewhat less true.