Dive Brief:
- Mount Sinai Hospital's operating income increased to $159.7 million during 2016 from $105.3 million in 2015, new bondholder documents show.
- The increase in its revenue ($2.4 billion in 2016 vs. $2.1 billion in 2015) was largely due to the New York City-based medical center's 9.8% year over year increase in its patient revenue service, which totaled $2.3 billion last year, according to Ernst & Young LLP.
- However, uncompensated care from bad debts for all patient services totaled an estimated $16.1 million in 2016 — up from $14.7 million in 2015, the documents show.
Dive Insight:
Mount Sinai is one of the select few hospitals that have reported an increase in operating income while many have been struggling financially. In contrast with what Mount Sinai experienced in 2016, Texas-based Tenet Healthcare's operating revenue went from $5.05 billion in 2015 to $4.86 billion last year, and its losses were attributed to a lack of demand.
Yet Mount Sinai embarked on several projects last year, which could have extended access to its services and made it seem more attractive to patients. These include the creation of the Mount Sinai Downtown network in New York City and a partnership with Oscar Health to open a full-service primary care center in Brooklyn. It also partnered with CloudMedx to use its predictive insights to identify high-risk patients. Earlier this year, Mount Sinai announced it will implement the Salesforce Health Cloud platform.
Uncompensated care, on the other hand, continues to be problematic across the board. Last month, Mayo Clinic CEO Dr. John Noseworthy received a lot of criticism for his comments about giving preferential treatment to patients with private health plans after uncompensated care costs associated with treating Medicaid patients totaled $548 million in 2016 compared to $321 million in 2012.