Ebola is a devastating disease for its victims, and in the first 20 days of October it has had a devastating effect on the finances of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
By Lance Muray
The hospital has seen an $8.1 million, 25 percent drop in revenue over the past three weeks because of concerns over the Ebola cases handled by the hospital, according to a regulatory filing released Wednesday for bondholders.
In the filing, Arlington-based Texas Health Resources said that the drop in revenue was based on a comparison to averages from the previous nine months. Texas Health Resources owns Presbyterian hospital
Emergency room visits have dropped 53 percent, surgeries are off by 25 percent and Texas Health Presbyterian’s average occupancy dropped from 428 to 337 during the past three weeks, the hospital said in the filing.
The hospital disclosed that it had $3.3 billion in available cash and investments, and said it had sufficient reserves to cover losses associated to the Ebola outbreak.
Texas Health Presbyterian said that it “is too early to predict what, if any material or significant financial impact this situation will have.”
No legal claims have been filed against the hospital yet, Texas Health Resources said in the filing.
The hospital has faced withering criticism for how it handled the case of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who died from Ebola on Oct. 8 at the hospital.
Several days earlier, Duncan visited the hospital’s emergency room complaining of Ebola-like symptoms but was sent home with an antibiotic on another diagnosis.
He returned two days later with full-blown Ebola symptoms and was admitted to the hospital.
Two nurses at the hospital, Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, subsequently came down with Ebola and both eventually were transferred to hospitals in other cities for treatment.
