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Nonprofit hospitals aim to maintain margins: even with increased reimbursement, financially beneficial opportunities are still hard to come by for some nonprofit hospitals.

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MANY NONPROFIT HOSPITALS are finding themselves in a grim financial environment, but others are gaining ground by leveraging market opportunities.

Each year, nonprofits must review their rate strategies in the context of maintaining financial viability. To achieve sustainability goals, some must raise rates to cover the costs of patient care, building maintenance, technology updates, health needs of their communities, and essential services, such as disaster preparedness and public-health emergencies.

To make matters worse, the rates of uninsured continue to climb, increasing charity-care totals among inner city hospitals, while also making the pool of insured patients the more attractive market. For some nonprofits, the percentage of uninsured patients is more than 50%.

"It is safe to say that the single biggest variable [for nonprofit hospitals] is how well insured the patient population is and its resources," says James D. Bentley, senior vice president, strategic policy planning, for the American Hospital Assn. "It falls on hospitals to pick up the pieces and try to figure out how...

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