by Although the COVID-19 pandemic began about five years ago, its impact on the economy and patient decisions is still being felt.
“People who are considering whether or not to come [for elective procedures]”, said Mordach.
What patients decide to do matters: Net revenue from patient care services was $6.3 billion of that $9.9 billion in revenue at Jefferson Health in fiscal year 2024.
According to a health care utilization tracker compiled by The Kaiser Family Foundation (now known as KFF), patients across the country are increasingly returning to hospitals for these non-urgent surgeries and other outpatient care.
For example, patient healthcare spending fell 6.6% in the second quarter of 2020 compared to the second quarter of 2019. While there have been peaks and valleys since then, healthcare use has generally increased, the KFF tracker shows.
According to CFO Mordach, Jefferson Health’s financial problems over the past four years have been attributed to COVID-19.
“There’s a lot of turmoil in terms of volume and access because of COVID,” he said.
Since then, there has been strong demand for outpatient surgeries between 2023 and 2024, an increase of approximately 3%.
“Our doctor visits have increased by almost 4%, so our sales volume [is] strong,” he said. “The university had a good, strong enrollment, [the] health plan [business] was strong.”
These financials include the performance of 18 hospitals, a university and a health insurer. On paper, Jefferson Health is essentially an umbrella “holding company,” which refers to all of its individual businesses within the system.
But in practice, Mordach says, leadership promotes an active management style.
“We’re not a holding company. We’re really an operational company and our CEO really shows that and encourages that we’re not sitting still,” he said. “We go to all of our locations and make sure we’re seeing what’s happening and listening to our teams.”
To make such dramatic changes, the CEO created a team of executives who were responsible for their areas of expertise, including financial accountability. There were 30 different operational initiatives that each had an executive sponsor, from clinical to academic to the insurance plan.
“Everyone was assigned one or two managers, hoping we would see additional benefits, whether it was revenue or expenses,” Mordach said.
For example, patients do not have to spend extra time in a hospital bed unless there is a medical reason for this, thereby shortening the length of the hospital stay.
“That efficiency of that length of stay is huge, you don’t have to hire additional staff. And on top of that, we can reduce the contract labor,” he said. “We’ve done a great job of improving the clinical teams. It allows us to use that bed a little bit quicker. We can see more patients using those same beds and that really helps tremendously.”
