In business, resiliency measures a company’s ability to weather each of the three stages of dislocation: the shock of initial crisis, the fight for stabilization, and the transition to normalization. For not-for-profit hospitals and health systems, the COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented assault on the core business model.

In 2020, COVID-19 undermined our nation’s health and severely tested our hospitals and health systems. At the same time that a series of spikes in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations...

Hospitals and health systems had a difficult start to 2021 as declining volumes, falling outpatient revenues, and rising expenses contributed to significant January margin declines. The ongoing effects of COVID-19 propelled January’s poor results, but it was a mixed month in terms of COVID-19 metrics.

Hospitals and health systems across the country closed a tumultuous 2020 with record levels of COVID-19 related hospitalizations and continued poor performance across most metrics in December. Hospital margins fell significantly with declining volumes and outpatient revenues, and escalating expenses compared to 2019.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to create a volatile operating environment for the nation’s employed physicians. Although physician practices saw some gains in the third quarter of 2020, most performance measures remained well below 2019 levels.

2020 was off to a strong start in hospital merger and acquisition activity, with the number of announced transactions in Q1 among the highest seen in the past four years. Then the COVID...

Mounting cases of COVID-19 are heightening the stress on our nation’s hospitals and health systems, even as many celebrate the recent approval and distribution of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine.

COVID-19 Continues to hit hospital finances hard as cases mount. With the federal aid, the median margin was 2.4% YTD. Operating Margin fell 69.4% YTD (6.0 percentage points) without CARES compared to January-October 2019, and 18.7% YTD (1.7 percentage points) with CARES.

The nation’s hospitals continue to face an uncertain operating environment, with margins fluctuating from month to month. Read more in this month's report.

The Physician Flash Report features real-time physician production, compensation, and operating expense data that is updated quarterly. Read more!

For the past 3 years, we've surveyed hospitals and health systems on their performance improvement and cost transformation efforts. This year, these efforts met an historic challenge with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Margins have consistently performed below 2019 levels as a result. Even so, the last few months had shown some signs of potential progress, with margins increasing incrementally month-over-month.