Dive Brief:
- Mayo Clinic said it has so far received $150 million in federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act funding plus an additional $900 million in advance Medicare payments, according to a voluntary filing on Friday outlining the impact of the pandemic. The system has also secured its own loans and increased lines of credit.
- Heading into the pandemic, Mayo said it had "record performance" in 2019 with total revenue of $13.82 billion and net operating income of more than $1 billion. As of March 31, Mayo had about $10.6 billion of cash and investments, of which a majority ($8.5 billion) was unrestricted or temporarily restricted.
- The Rochester, Minnesota-based academic medical center guaranteed employee salaries through Tuesday. However, to mitigate revenue shortfalls, Mayo has temporarily reduced salaries for executives, physicians and senior administrators; instituted furloughs, a hiring freeze and a reduction in benefits; and delayed or canceled a significant portion of its planned 2020 capital expenditures.
Dive Insight:
Following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, Mayo Clinic, like other systems, deferred all elective care at its facilities nationwide for at least eight weeks starting March 23. The decision, made on March 17, was followed by orders from state governors in Minnesota, Arizona and Florida, home to Mayo's clinics, to halt elective procedures.
Mayo estimates up to $3 billion in revenue losses so far given the system is operating "well below" normal capacity.
Still, Mayo said it does not expect the situation "to have a significant impact on operations in the current quarter and possibly for the remainder of the year." Yet, Mayo cautioned the situation is evolving rapidly and it's hard to project the financial impact with any certainty.
Mayo is not alone, as postponing care has hit U.S. hospitals and doctor's offices hard. Federal regulators have tried to keep them whole through a sum $175 billion in funding benchmarked for providers in two pieces of legislation, the CARES Act passed in March and the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act passed Friday. CMS also last month began accelerating Medicare payments to providers in the form of loans, though the agency said Sunday it was dialing back the program.
"The COVID-19 situation and response is rapidly evolving and it is not possible to project with any certainty the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Mayo Clinic's financial performance," according to Friday's filing.
A second wave of more targeted funding from the CARES act is expected to start arriving soon that ties allocation to a system's net patient service revenue. Essentially, providers with a larger patient revenue base will receive a greater proportion of dollars, meant to assuage hospitals angry with the Trump administration for allocating the first round of funding based off Medicare fee-for-service revenue.