Covid-19 care from March 2021 to March 2022 cost Huntsville Hospital more than $40 million.
The hospital submitted a claim for $40,880,208, but only $2,017,530 in aid has been disbursed, according to the Alabama Hospital Association. That money comes from second round of American Rescue Plan Act funds.
Jeff Samz, CEO of Huntsville Hospital, said they're grateful for any amount of Covid-19 aid from the federal government, but $38 million is a big amount of money they're now having to find elsewhere.
"We're drawing from other pools of funds to make that work," said Samz.
Samz said Huntsville Hospital has solid financial footing, but the cost of the pandemic was and still is an extraordinary cost on hospitals.
"We're fortunate to be a big health care system that can absorb some of this," said Samz. "It's much harder on the smaller hospitals, both in our system and rural hospitals in the state that may not have the financial reserves we have."
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Samz said Huntsville Hospital did not intend to get $40 million in reimbursements. In fact, $40 million was the total amount of funds that needed to be allocated between 100 hospitals.
The costs submitted by hospitals to the government included a number of pandemic-related care expenses.
"It could be anything, from Covid-related testing, the medications that we use to care for Covid patients, and then a big portion of it is the extraordinary staffing costs," said Samz. "All hospitals, we've had a lot of nurses either leave or go travel, and we're all having our staffing costs increase."
There's been several rounds of Covid-19 relief for area hospitals during the pandemic. From March 2021 to March 2022, rural hospitals got a boost as well. They received $30 million in separate funding.
However, Alabama hospitals have submitted more than $800 million total in Covid-19 care expenses.
"There's not going to be enough to go around, under any circumstance," said Samz.
Samz said the hospital is expecting one more round of funding in relation to pandemic care. He expects that will be discussed during the next legislative session.
View the Alabama Hospital Association's report below, including the aid amounts disbursed to other hospitals in North Alabama during the second round of funding.
