- The Nebraska Hospital Association unveiled its 2024 impact report showing hospitals have had $19.3 billion dollar impact on Nebraska. The report comes as Congress is negotiating significant Medicaid cuts during its budget reconciliation process.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
A new report from the Nebraska Hospital Association shows that across the state hospitals employ more than 54,000 jobs.
Hospitals paid out $5.0 billion in payroll and benefits and had a total economic impact of $19.3 Billion dollars.
In recent years have refocused much of their efforts on community wellness.
“As we talk about community benefits, that is behavioral healthcare, maternal care, senior care and workforce development,” said Jeremy Nordquist with the Nebraska Hospital Association.
The report highlighted a number of success stories in our neighborhood hospitals.
Stories like the Senior Behavioral health unit at the Columbus Community Hospital, which since 2021 has helped seniors navigate issues like physical disability, dementia and other common issues in older adults.
“We are keeping people out of our ER, we are gonna keep people out of jail and prison. Not only that we are taking care of them in the right place,” said Mark Hansen, President and CEO of Columbus Community Hospital.
Unfortunately Hansen and Nordquist warn these new services that are doing so much good will be the first on the chopping block if Congress goes ahead with planned medicaid cuts some hospitals are at risk of closing entirely
“We are the 35 cents on the dollar hospital. It’s just unsustainable we can’t continue to take those cuts,” said Hansen.
Nordquist warned that the number of hospitals facing dire financial straights isn’t a small one and with large parts of Nebras already struggling to cover their healthcare needs the state can’t afford to lose anymore hospitals.
“We do know from some national analytics that have come out, there are ten or so hospitals in the state in a tough financial position…we have hospitals that have been running negative margins for a while and their reserves aren’t enough to sustain them over a long period of time.
