GRANT SOOTHES AILING GRIFFIN
Hospital suffers from financial affects of COVID-19
DERBY — A new $8.7 million federal grant couldn’t have come at a better time for Griffin Hospital.
Patrick Charmel, the hospital’s president, said he is dealing with an expected $23 million revenue shortfall in the hospital’s $180 million operating budget from the facility’s response to the pandemic.
Griffin’s response included required coronavirus renovations, creating a drive-through testing site and increasing capacity for COVID-19 patients as well as imposed restrictions on elective surgery set by the state.
On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3, announced that the hospital received the $8.7 million from the CARES Act high impact funding. The award comes on top of more than $4.6 million already received from the CARES Act general relief fund.
Charmel said if not for DeLauro’s efforts, the money, particularly the general relief funding, might not have come.
The $4.6 million was tied to having a 100th coronavirus patient discharged from care by April 10.
“Our one hundredth patient left on April 21,” Charmel said.
When the hospital found its 100th discharge was too late to get the funding, Charmel said, “the
first person I called was Rosa and she began advocating on our behalf.”
Getting the funding was critical, DeLauro said.
“Without additional support, we feared that health providers, like Griffin, would have had no choice but to scale back their COVID-19 response, despite the critical need in our state at the time,” DeLauro said. “Scaling back meant potentially laying off essential workers, which ran completely counter to the intent of Congress in providing the CARES Act funding to maintain America’s health care workforce.”
Now DeLauro is urging the U.S. Senate to pass the Heroes Act, something the House of Representatives approved in May. She said it provides an additional $100 billion for hospitals suffering from the economic impact of the pandemic.
The Heroes Act “enables providers to receive 60 percent of lost revenues compared to last year, and for full reimbursement for pandemic-related costs. These include temporary construction, equipment, tests, training and workforce retention,” DeLauro said.
The pandemic’s impact goes beyond traditional medical care, Charmel said. The shutdowns have resulted in job losses leading to the inability to pay rent and buy healthy foods and what experts are seeing as a spike in domestic violence.
From March 8 to July 7, Griffin screened 2,657 people during medical care for their general health. Of those, 648 or 25 percent were identified as being affected by job loss, stress, food insecurity or domestic problems.
“All of those things impact the well-being of the population and this hospital feels an obligation to address those needs as well,” he said. “We can’t do that alone. We do that in collaboration with important community-based organizational like TEAM, the local anti-poverty agency.”
So every two weeks, Griffin is buying food wholesale that it distributes to the Valley’s five food banks, he said. They are providing financial support to TEAM which helps subsidize its client’s rental costs.
In the meantime, Griffin is still dealing with its shortfall, $3 million in infrastructure costs and a Derby Charter Revision Commission that has decided to remove an annual $1,000 grant to Griffin.
Charmel said without the federal financial support that DeLauro advocates for, “independent community hospitals like Griffin could literally have been in a position where they had to close their doors.”