• UPMC has $653 million Q1 loss as investments, patient volumes fell. Business,
UPMC lost $653 million over the first three months of 2020, including a $41 million operating loss largely related to the COVID-19 pandemic, network officials said Thursday.
Most of the hit came as the Pittsburgh-based health giant’s investment and financing activities recorded a $799 million loss after the nation’s economy largely shut down to contain spread of the deadly virus. UPMC’s $7 billion reserve in cash and investments is down from $7.3 billion a year ago.
During a media briefing, Edward Karlovich, UPMC’s interim chief financial officer, said first quarter operating revenue was $5.5 billion, compared with $5.1 billion during the same period a year earlier.
He also said UPMC Health Plan, the insurance arm of the operation, now has nearly 3.8 million members.
First quarter results likely do not reflect the pandemic’s full impact, as hospitals were particularly hard hit in late March into April after Gov. Tom Wolf issued a state-ordered ban on elective medical procedures March 19.
UPMC, while not stopping all nonemergency procedures, did delay 70% of those surgeries, Dr. Steven Shapiro, UPMC’s chief medical and scientific officer, said earlier this month.
And UPMC spokeswoman Susan Manko said Thursday that even before the governor’s order, “patients were becoming reluctant to come in for care, even though we never stopped providing essential care.”
Unlike some smaller hospitals, the Pittsburgh region’s largest provider network — with more than 90,000 employees and 40 hospitals — did avoid furloughing workers due to the pandemic.
Now, after seeing a 4% drop in patient admissions and observations over the first quarter, “volume is coming back and it’s coming back quickly and strongly,” said Leslie Davis, chief operating officer for UPMC’s health services division during the media briefing.
Although COVID-19 has hit southwestern Pennsylvania, she noted that the region “has not been a hot spot and we’re grateful for that.”
Because not all infected patients develop symptoms and thus pose a risk of unknowingly infecting others, UPMC began offering to test all asymptomatic patients for coronavirus in late April.
Ms. Davis said Thursday that only seven of the 4,300 patients since then had positive tests — although Ms. Manko acknowledged that “nearly half” of the patients not showing symptoms are declining to be tested.