UF Health Jacksonville CEO Leon Haley said despite a downtick in patient visits and outpatient surgeries across the system, the hospital should be financially stable until at least the end of June.
Haley said he hopes by then the executive order by Gov. Ron DeSantis barring elective surgeries will be lifted and the hospital will be able to start seeing normal patient volumes.
Haley spoke in a community forum teleconference April 16 to members of the Jacksonville City Council and other community leaders. He provided updates on the hospital as it treats 12 coronavirus patients and begins providing testing in the hospital and the community.
Haley said the institution received $81 million in stimulus funds. Of that, $71 million was from an advance Medicare payment which must be repaid by early November. The remaining $10 million doesn’t need to be repaid.
“Hopefully we can be restarted, get our case volumes back up and we’ll be able to do that,” Haley said.
The hospital also received support from banks and the First Coast Relief Fund, and Haley said it is working with other philanthropic groups to raise money. UF Health Jacksonville also could take out loans from its bank to continue operating.
About 900 to 1,000 patients a day are being seen through telemedicine, Haley said. There are about 400 patients at the Downtown hospital and UF Health North that aren’t coronavirus related.
Normally, the hospital has 500 of its 695 licensed beds filled at the Springfield hospital.
DeSantis issued an executive order March 20 banning medical providers from performing surgery not deemed medically necessary.
Haley said hospital admissions are down 14%, operating room visits are down 60% and clinic patient visits are down 65%.
The UF Health Imaging Center in Baymeadows, which opened in early March, closed because of low patient volumes.
“That’s designed for elective outpatient procedures,” Haley said. “That’s basically an empty building for us.”
Staffers who were working in the outpatient departments in the hospital are being told to use their paid leave time. Some are taking unpaid time. Others are treating COVID-19 patients, or screening people at the hospital’s doors.
UF Health Jacksonville also is staffing the testing sites it started April 8 at public housing projects in Jacksonville. Those sites are testing both symptomatic and asymptomatic people.
“One of the challenges you see every hospital with is we have people, it’s this quirky dichotomy where you’re trying to get ready for this big virus with lots of inpatient care, but your outpatient business isn’t quite the same,” Haley said.
Haley said the goal is to not furlough or lay off any employees. UF Health Jacksonville employs around 3,300 people throughout the system, its website says.
“I think we’re OK right now,” Haley said. “We still have to watch our budgets and our bottom line and see where we are. When we believe everybody is comfortable and the governor is comfortable, we will try to get people scheduled as quickly as possible to support everything we need.”