Children’s hospitals were spared from the worst ravages of the pandemic, putting them in a much stronger financial position than their acute-care peers.
At their January 2022 peak, Covid-19 hospitalizations were more than five times higher across all age groups compared with kids, even though kids have far lower Covid-19 vaccination rates than adults. The result, according to a new Fitch report, is children’s hospitals have more cash and stronger margins than larger hospitals.
That’s not to say children’s hospitals aren’t struggling with the ongoing labor shortage, but they’re buffered somewhat because they didn’t rely as heavily on travel nurses during the pandemic, said Richard Park, a director at Fitch and author of the report. Because of that, there’s less burnout among their ranks — and they already tend to see less turnover than other hospitals, Park said.
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