Even as the novel coronavirus pandemic draws attention and resources to the nation’s doctors and hospitals, the health-care industry is suffering a historic collapse in business that is emerging as one of the most powerful forces hurting the U.S. economy and a threat to a potential recovery, the Washington Post reported. The widespread economic shutdown deployed to reduce transmission of the coronavirus hit hospitals and health-care providers with particular force as they prepared to face the pandemic. Most elective surgeries nationwide were postponed beginning in mid-March. Dentists offices were closed. Physicians stopped seeing all but the sickest patients in their offices. Stay-at-home orders didn’t just prevent people from dining in restaurants — they led people to avoid medical services, too, amid concerns about the virus’s disease, COVID-19. More than 200 hospitals, including Children’s National Hospital in Washington, have furloughed workers, according to a tally by Becker’s Hospital Review. The result was that health-care spending declined at an annualized rate of 18 percent in the first three months of the year, according to Commerce Department data released last week, the largest reduction since the government started keeping records in 1959.
