re: Normal (pre-Covid) Hospital occupancy rates and ICU rates

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And as someone familiar with the financial side...they will keep you in a bed as long as you, your insurance Co, or the govt will pay them. Once that spigot is dry you will be sent home as soon as possible.

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Hmm. I will have to ask you to explain what you mean. Hospitals are paid on the DRG. The simple-man’s version is:
If you have a heart attack, the reimbursement to the hospital is (made up number) $5,000
If you have pneumonia, the reimbursement is (made up number) $3500
If you have COVID the reimbursement is (made up and inflated number, partially for humor) $35,000

The codes on the chart dictate the payment. The hospital that can move the patient through efficiently makes money. The ones that can’t lose money. In reality, they’re all fairly efficient most of the time and lose their arse here and there at others.

If you read the article here, hospitals are hugely incentivized to spend as little as possible on you and get you out the door as soon as possible, not keep you in a bed until the spigot runs dry.



I’ll clarify that I don’t support or like the current system. To an extent, I get why it works like it does, but it’s taken me years of meetings and observations. In some ways it makes me feel pretty icky. I’ve never been forced to send someone home that I thought should stay. I’ve never been asked to put an inaccurate diagnosis on a chart. I don’t doubt that somewhere, someone was/did either of those things, maybe even around me. But I’m not sure I agree with your sentiment the way I’m reading it.

Why can't you find hospital bed availability on the Louisiana Department of Health website anymore? Why would they remove that info?

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Hospitals are paid on the DRG. The simple-man’s version is:
If you have a heart attack, the reimbursement to the hospital is (made up number) $5,000
If you have pneumonia, the reimbursement is (made up number) $3500
If you have COVID the reimbursement is (made up and inflated number, partially for humor) $35,000

The codes on the chart dictate the payment. The hospital that can move the patient through efficiently makes money. The ones that can’t lose money. In reality, they’re all fairly efficient most of the time and lose their arse here and there at others.

If you read the article here, hospitals are hugely incentivized to spend as little as possible on you and get you out the door as soon as possible, not keep you in a bed until the spigot runs dry.

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Exactly! 100% accurate! I’ve been in various corporate and hospital accounting positions and have been a CFO for quite some time. I have never know physicians or hospitals to code inaccurately. It’s a giant no no and Medicare has a lot of programs to prevent this. It would also get folks jail time if caught because it’s fraudulent billing.

Your numbers are really funny. Everybody would have gone out of business was long ago with that reimbursement. But you are right that it makes the hospital be as efficient as possible. There are also quality and outcome measurements that can effect your payment as well.

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Start with a hospital on a normal non-COVID day it is very busy.

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so you are stating this assumption as a fact?

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So a hospital during a COVID wave looking like a ghost town from the outside is perfectly logical.

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he talked to one of the employees......that guy said, there is was no one there.