Randolph Health, a 145-bed community hospital in central North Carolina, declared bankruptcy in March 2020 and might have closed for good if it had not received $14.5 million in federal emergency pandemic grants, the Washington Post reported. The cash didn’t cover all its COVID-related losses, but at least Randolph could make payroll. “Every penny of that was critical and we were just thankful,” said Reynolds Lisk, a former Randolph board member who was born in the hospital in 1957 and fought to save it. “It literally enabled us to continue to operate.” The money flowing from Washington was barely enough to keep Randolph afloat — but those funds proved to be a windfall for Atrium Health, a regional nonprofit hospital chain headquartered in Charlotte. Atrium got $617 million in government relief from April 2020 to December 2021. The money, along with a soaring stock market and surging payments for patient care, helped it reap more than a billion dollars in surplus revenue last year. Atrium bulked up with two mergers and announced plans for a third during the pandemic. It boosted its CEO’s compensation by 24 percent, to $9.8 million. The vastly different experiences illustrate the unintended consequences of a $178 billion bailout that Congress dumped into the national health-care system at the start of the pandemic in an urgent attempt to keep hospitals and doctors afloat. Two years later, data show that the money indeed served as a lifeline for many hospitals that might not have withstood the onslaught of the coronavirus — but the funds also exacerbated the gap between the industry’s haves and have-nots, disproportionately rewarding wealthy hospitals that did not need the money as urgently. Many institutions reported strong profits and pursued growth strategies without pause.
