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Pennsylvania’s Rehabilitation, Psychiatric Hospitals on Strong Financial Footing

Non-general acute care facilities in Pennsylvania, such as rehabilitation and psychiatric hospitals, remained financially sound during fiscal year 2011. That’s according to the most recent report from The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council (PHC4). The strongest category was rehabilitation hospitals which saw statewide operating margins improve 3.76 percentage points.

“Psychiatric hospitals were pretty stable, they saw their operating margin drop just slightly, less than a percentage point, but their overall margin improved over the previous year. Long-term acute care hospitals were almost the same, they saw very small declines in their margins of less than a percentage point,” said PHC4 Spokesman Gary Tuma.

This was the third report in a series. The first looked at the financial stability of traditional hospitals, the second looked at non-ambulatory surgical centers. All three reports found that hospitals in the state are generally in sound condition. That, said Tuma, is important for the communities that depend upon the facilities.

“In many communities hospitals are a big part of the economy, they’re employers, they account for a good amount of the economic activity in various communities around the state,” he said, “in some cases they’re some of the major employers in certain regions.”

Other findings of the report include the number of patients receiving rehab care increased 2.8 percent and the number of rehab patient days increased 1.4 percent. More than half of the revenue to the state’s 19 psychiatric hospitals was from medical assistance, and long-term acute-care facilities received 73.4 percent of their patient revenue from Medicare.