Medicaid expansion does little to improve finances, care of critical access hospitals

DOTmed December 22, 2021
John R. Fischer

One third of U.S. hospitals are critical access, meaning that they have fewer than 25 beds and are located more than 35 miles from the nearest hospital. While intended to make these hospitals more profitable or at least start to break even, a new study shows that Medicaid expansion has done little to make them financially better or able to provide better care than hospitals in non-expansion states.

Quality scores and staffing levels did not improve in these hospitals and big differences were not found in the amount of uncompensated care they provided. Additionally, those in Medicaid expansion states only saw a small increase in operating margins of 1.3%, according to the report, which looked at 1,158 critical access hospitals....

Today's Sponsors

Today's Sponsor