Not-for-Profits Lead in Patient-Care Surpluses

Not-for-profit hospitals dominated the list of U.S. hospitals with the largest surpluses from patient-care services, a study in Health Affairs found.

Seven of the top 10 were not-for-profits, including the top four. They were led by Wisconsin’s Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center, with a surplus of more than $302,000. Gundersen was followed by California’s Sutter Medical Center—Sacramento ($272,000) and Stanford Hospital and Clinics ($225,000) and Kentucky’s Norton Hospital ($211,000). The top surplus among for-profits was Medical City Dallas Hospital’s $210,000.

A number of factors shape that profitability. “Profits are going to be high when a hospital has a very dominant market share,” study coauthor Gerard Anderson told Modern Healthcare. Other factors include retail markups, the presence of a dominant insurer in the market, prestige, patient mix and more.

Gundersen’s total worked out to $4,241 per patient, but CFO Dara Bartels said in a statement that the study didn’t accurately reflect “our costs, as an integrated health system, for the care we provide in a multistate, largely rural region with a higher Medicare patient mix, and does not analyze data on quality of care.”