SAN FRANCISCO — Chinese Hospital, located in the heart of this city’s legendary Chinatown, struggles with many of the same financial and demographic challenges that plague small independent hospitals in underserved areas across the country.
Many of its patients are aging Chinese speakers with limited incomes who are reliant on Medicare and Medi-Cal, which pay less than commercial insurance and often don’t fully cover provider costs. And due to an arcane federal rule, Chinese Hospital receives a lower rate of reimbursement than many other hospitals that treat a large number of low-income patients. Add the high cost of labor and supplies in this post-pandemic world, and it’s not hard to see why the hospital lost $20 million over the past two years and tapped a nearly $10.4 million loan from the state’s distressed hospital loan fund.
Yet the 88-bed hospital has strong ties to the University of California-San Francisco and the city’s public health department. And it gets support from businesses, charities, and the surrounding community. For Jian Zhang, 58, the hospital’s CEO since 2017, fundraising is like breathing.
“I feel like it’s a full-time job for me,” said Zhang, who arrived in San Francisco from Guangzhou, China, as an international student in 1990, earned a nursing doctorate from the University of San Francisco, and has remained in the Bay Area.
Revenue from fundraising and other services have provided a big boost, helping the hospital significantly offset what it lost on patient care in 2022, according …
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SAN FRANCISCO — Chinese Hospital, located in the heart of this city’s legendary Chinatown, struggles with many of the same financial and demographic challenges that plague small independent hospitals in underserved areas across the country.
Many of its patients are aging Chinese speakers with limited incomes who are reliant on Medicare and Medi-Cal, which pay less than commercial insurance and often don’t fully cover provider costs. And due to an arcane federal rule, Chinese Hospital receives a lower rate of reimbursement than many other hospitals that treat a large number of low-income patients. Add the high cost of labor and supplies in this post-pandemic world, and it’s not hard to see why the hospital lost $20 million over the past two years and tapped a nearly $10.4 million loan from the state’s distressed hospital loan fund.
Yet the 88-bed hospital has strong ties to the University of California-San Francisco and the city’s public health department. And it gets support from businesses, charities, and the surrounding community. For Jian Zhang, 58, the hospital’s CEO since 2017, fundraising is like breathing.
“I feel like it’s a full-time job for me,” said Zhang, who arrived in San Francisco from Guangzhou, China, as an international student in 1990, earned a nursing doctorate from the University of San Francisco, and has remained in the Bay Area.
Revenue from fundraising and other services have provided a big boost, helping the hospital significantly offset what it lost on patient care in 2022, according …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]