The financial impact of COVID-19 on California hospitals : January 2020 through June 2021 Melnick, Glenn, author. Maerki, Susan, author. COVID-19 -- economics Hospitals -- trends In March 2020, most California acute care hospitals began postponing elective admissions and nonurgent care due to a statewide “shelter-in-place” order and a predicted surge of COVID-19 patients. Across the state, hospital capacity was expanded from approximately 80,000 inpatient beds to nearly 130,000 as facilities began repurposing space and procuring additional equipment, supplies, and staff. Meanwhile, a significant number of patients began to forgo care as economic activity and travel in the state dropped precipitously. These developments had immediate impacts on utilization, costs, and revenue in California’s hospitals, with outpatient services and emergency department (ED) visits falling by approximately 50% in the 60 days after the statewide order took effect.3 This report updates prior estimates of the impact of COVID-19 on utilization, costs, and revenue in California hospitals through the end of 2020. Utilization and financial data covering calendar years 2019 and 2020 for 355 acute care hospitals, as reported to the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD), are incorporated. These 355 facilities are classified as “comparable” by OSHPD and represent approximately 80% of hospital capacity in the state. Excluded from the analysis are Kaiser hospitals, which compose approximately 8% of statewide bed capacity, as well as state, long-term psychiatric, long-term care, and other noncomparable facilities. The analysis is supplemented with daily registration data representing approximately 40% of the volume of the state’s acute care facilities using proprietary data from Collective Medical Technologies (CMT). CMT data allowed for estimated trends in hospital inpatient admissions and emergency department visits through June 2021. [Oakland, CA] : California Health Care Foundation, August 2021 California HealthCare Foundation, issuing body. Technical Report Text Illustrations 1 online resource (1 PDF file (19 pages)) nlm:nlmuid-9918366982006676-pdf 9918366982006676 http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918366982006676 English California United States Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-ND license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0