Washington Co. reimburses $6M to two local hospitals for COVID-19 expenses
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
A room in Washington Hospital’s CCU is a flurry of activity as health-care workers rush to admit a patient in this January photo. The staff works together to check vitals, administer medication and perform a COVID test.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
A health-care worker quickly dons personal protective equipment before entering a COVID-19 patient’s room on Washington Hospital’s critical care unit in January. Slipping into isolation gowns and pulling on gloves and face shields has become routine since the pandemic began in 2020.
Washington County is using federal stimulus money to reimburse two local hospitals a combined $6 million to help pay for a portion of COVID-related expenses they experienced over the past year.
The county commissioners voted unanimously Thursday to authorize a payment of up to $4.09 million to Washington Health System’s Washington Hospital and $1.99 million to Penn Highlands Monongahela Valley Hospital using federal American Rescue Plan Act funds.
“They have incurred great losses during the pandemic … and it’s critical to help them to continue to maintain service,” commission Chairwoman Diana Irey Vaughan said after the meeting.
The county made similar payments to the hospitals earlier in the pandemic using CARES Act funding, so it made sense to make another contribution after multiple surges in new coronavirus cases last year, Irey Vaughan said. However, this will only be a one-time payment to help reimburse hospitals that had “out-of-pocket” expenses, she said.
County Finance Director Joshua Hatfield said the two hospitals gave them a listing of expenses related to the pandemic after March 2021 that were eligible for reimbursement. Some of those expenses included new equipment, laboratory testing and contracted labor, he said.
WHS spokeswoman Stephanie Wagoner said the various waves of COVID-19 infections hammered the hospital and kept patients in treatment longer than typical illnesses.
“The delta variant was devastating to many, including local community health systems like ours,” Wagoner said in a written statement Thursday. “During this time, our hospitals had experienced a drastic increase in COVID positive inpatient hospitalizations and the majority of those patients were staying much longer than prior COVID patients. Sometimes weeks as compared to days. With that, you would expect reimbursements for longer stays to match, but they do not.”
She said insurance reimbursements for some of the long-term patients were “the same as if they were only with us for a few days” undergoing treatment.
“This creates a large financial burden when you have a full hospital with long-term patients filling up beds,” Wagoner said. “We are grateful to the commissioners for approving this money from their ARPA money that will help us to offset the cost of unreimbursed expenses.”
Corinne Laboon, a spokeswoman for Penn Highlands, said the reimbursement from the county is helpful because at one point 50% of the inpatient cases at Mon Valley Hospital were people with COVID-19. The hospital system had to invoice non-reimbursed expenses for the county to consider, and Mon Valley received its exact request, she said.
“Basically, this money is money that was for expenses that were unreimbursed. It’s helping out a great deal,” Laboon said. “It’s going to help us help our hospital, but more importantly, it’s going to help our community.”
Canonsburg Hospital, which is within the Allegheny Health Network, did not make a reimbursement request to Washington County.