Hospitals, Policy

Here’s what hospitals got in the first round of CARES Act payments

Congress approved $175 billion in emergency funding for hospitals, facing the costs of treating Covid-19 patients and cancelled procedures. The Department of Health and Human Services released new data on how the first set of payments was allocated.

Cash-crunched healthcare providers received their first emergency payments from the Department of Health and Human Services last month. So far, Congress has allocated a total of $175 billion in relief for healthcare providers to help them recoup losses tied to the Covid-19 pandemic.

HHS released new data sharing where those initial payments have gone. The first $50 billion in CARES Act funding was distributed to hospitals last month based on their patient revenue.

The first $30 billion of that went to hospitals based on their Medicare fee-for-service reimbursements, which HHS said would allow the funds to be distributed quickly, but put hospitals that see more Medicaid patients at a disadvantage. Another $20 million was distributed in late April based on providers’ share of net patient revenue.

Here’s which health systems saw the most of that funding:

  1. Dignity Health: $180,264,488
  2. Cleveland Clinic: $103,289,897
  3. Stanford Health Care: $102,405,229
  4. Memorial Hermann Health System: $92,422,556
  5. NYU Langone Hospitals: $92,120,455
  6. The County of Los Angeles: $80,867,712 (The County of Los Angeles operates four hospitals, including Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and LAC+USC Medical Center)
  7. Hackensack Meridian Health: $76,839,719
  8. Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute: $67,343,375
  9. Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases: $64,048,724
  10. Massachusetts General: $58,076,206

The hospitals listed above only include facilities that accepted HHS’ terms and conditions for receiving the funding as of May 4. As part of those terms, hospitals must agree not to “balance bill” Covid-19 patients, meaning they cannot charge an out-of-network patient more than they would pay if they had been in-network.

Separately, publicly-traded health systems have shared how much their facilities received in CARES Act payments. The largest for-profit hospital operator, HCA Healthcare, received $700 million in payments. Tenet received $345 million, Community Health Systems received $245 million and Universal Health Services received $195 million.

HHS also shared some additional information on how much states will receive in payments for hospitals in Covid-19 hotspots and rural hospitals. Here’s how those payments will be distributed:

 

Photo credit: Bill Oxford, Getty Images

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