HCA is widely regarded as one of the most efficient operators in its industry, with the largest profit margins of any American hospital chain that trades on the stock market. Shares have returned fivefold in the past decade
HCA Staffing Shrank During Pandemic, Unlike Most Hospitals
The hospital chain’s profitability outperformed peers as one measure of staffing fell from 2018 levels
A primary care physician costs $344,308 a year, whereas a primary care NP costs about $156,546, according to 2022 data compiled by Kaufman Hall, a health-care consulting company. Yet primary care NPs can generate $424,979 of direct revenue a year, only $37,000 less than a physician. Put another way, NPs are twice as profitable.
NPs who join HCA are at a particular disadvantage: They work in a system so thinly staffed that there’s little margin for error. The company has one of the lowest ratios of physicians and advanced practice providers (a catchall term for nurse practitioners and physician assistants) per bed among more than 600 US health-care systems that the federal government tracks. Registered nurses and other support staff aren’t included in that tally, but other government data that accounts for a wide range of roles also show HCA tends to staff leanly.
At the Chippenham Hospital, HCA experimented testing nurse practitioners can do a physician’s job caring for acutely ill patients. The experiment failed. Patients died.
Physicians are in short supply, and NPs can fill the gap. There’s also a financial motivation to push the envelope.
Scott Hickey, a physician who ran Chippenham’s ER for a decade until 2019, says he constantly had to resist management’s push for minimal staffing levels. “You put in these inexperienced, not-as-well-trained, midlevel clinicians and have them responsible for an entire intensive care unit overnight,” Hickey says. “And that’s a disaster.”
Unfortunately the article does not indicate whether any liability charges have been brought against HCA. I couldn’t find any such on the internet. But came up with numerous stories of HCA cutting corners in the name of cost cutting. I particularity like the one about roaches over running HCA operating rooms in various locations.
Luckily neither of my towns 2 hospitals are owned by HCA. But one is owned by Lifepoint Health that has negative stories about it hospitals. Particularly in my city its hospital has denied healthcare to the indigent according to NBC News.
I dunno, one always risks dying in a hospital. And of course it is not always and perhaps mostly not the fault of the hospital or its personnel or policies. But the incidence of such seems to be on the rise. And perhaps that is to be expected as profitability/stock return is the #1 goal. And the path to that is cost cutting and corner cutting.