{"id":797221,"date":"2026-08-01T10:31:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T10:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/797221\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T10:31:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T10:31:40","slug":"straining-to-contain-ballooning-expenses-oregon-hospitals-are-gobbling-up-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/797221\/","title":{"rendered":"Straining to Contain Ballooning Expenses, Oregon Hospitals Are Gobbling Up Cash"},"content":{"rendered":"

From a recent wave of financial reports, a remarkable statistic stands out: In 2015, hospitals in Oregon reported spending just over $10 billion on their operations. A decade later, those expenses had more than doubled\u2014to $22 billion.<\/p>\n

Hospital revenue has been rising nearly apace (though not, hospitals say, enough), siphoning ever more money from insurance premiums and government budgets.<\/p>\n

In other words, everyday Oregonians are funding these ballooning budgets, which account for a huge proportion of health care spending in the state. And while out-of-control health care cost inflation is not a problem unique to Oregon, a fight is brewing here over whether local factors are making it worse. <\/p>\n

What is not in great dispute is where hospitals are deploying most of this money. Particularly in an aging state, more people are seeking medical care, and surging medical supply and pharmaceutical costs are a major factor too. But an Oregon Health Authority analysis released this month said the biggest cost driver of all was rising payroll expenses\u2014the cost of salary and wages to hospital employees. Those have gone up an average of 8% per year in the past decade\u2014more than double the overall rate of inflation. <\/p>\n

Why can\u2019t hospitals do a better job keeping their costs down? \u201cThe answer to that quite simply is a state regulatory environment and labor landscape that makes that very hard,\u201d Hospital Association of Oregon chief executive Becky Hultberg tells WW. <\/p>\n

Her association detailed its position on the matter in a report released<\/a> this week. Hospital expenses, it says, are rising so steeply in large part because Oregon has some of the highest wages in the nation <\/a>for health care professionals\u2014a fact Hultberg attributes to a labor shortage in particular fields, as well as a high overall unionization rate in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can argue it\u2019s a good thing that we\u2019re paying our workers really well,\u201d she says. \u201cBut there has to be revenue then to cover those costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem, she says, is that there is not. Oregon has a higher rate of Medicare and Medicaid enrollment than the U.S. average, but the hospital association says these massive government programs do not pay enough to cover costs. Meanwhile, it reports payments delays and denials from the other key payer, commercial insurance companies.<\/p>\n

On top of all of this, the hospital group traces its financial woes to a state regulatory landscape it describes as uncommonly baroque. A few sample complaints: Regulators drag out merger approvals; the state facility licensing system is unwieldy; and a law mandating hospital staffing levels is poorly and unjustly administered. <\/p>\n

There are reasons to be skeptical here. Past studies<\/a> of hospital prices show that Oregon\u2019s, in aggregate, come in at around the national average. \u201cIf the argument is that regulatory burden is what drives higher prices, and Oregon has an unusually burdensome regulatory environment, then you would expect to see our prices be significantly more than other states\u2019,\u201d says Hayden Rooke-Ley, a Portland researcher with the Brown University School of Public Health. <\/p>\n

Rooke-Ley adds that hospital expenses ultimately reflect a combination of factors. <\/p>\n

\u201cInsofar as there are unnecessary cost drivers being driven by an overly burdensome regulatory environment, then I think we should all be working together to figure out how to minimize those,\u201d he says. \u201cBut we also know that hospital prices are often associated with private sector bargaining dynamics and vary considerably across geographies, even under the same regulatory environment.\u201d <\/p>\n

Another close observer, Art Suchorzewski of FamilyCare Health, points out a tension in the hospital association narrative. The idea that more people are going to hospitals suggests they are getting sicker, which suggests they are not exactly getting great value out of all of this extra money.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the one hand, we\u2019re spending a lot more on health care,\u201d Suchorzewski says. \u201cBut on the other hand, their document says that we\u2019re getting sicker and we\u2019re using more hospital services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unions, meanwhile, have their own reason to be wary of hospital complaints. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a familiar story: Six-figure executives cry poverty while the CEOs and others in the C-suite earn millions of dollars each year,\u201d says AFSCME Oregon spokesman David Kreisman in a statement. \u201cThat\u2019s a cost that should be examined.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kreisman adds that Oregonians \u201care proud and relieved at the high number of better-paying union jobs in health care. That\u2019s something everyone can get behind. That means lower turnover, better care, and workers who can afford to live in the communities they serve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, there is little doubt Oregon hospitals have been struggling lately to stay in the black. The hospital association wants the state to strengthen Medicaid payments\u2014a tall order with major federal spending reductions looming. And it wants lawmakers to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and \u201chold insurers accountable.\u201d <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, hospitals insist they are cutting costs as much as possible. \u201cWe continue to focus on, where is there waste in our service delivery?\u201d says Melissa Damm, the Providence Health & Services chief financial officer who oversees a division that includes Oregon. By phone, she tells WW that Providence Oregon lost more than $300 million on its operations in 2025, but that in the first two quarters of 2026, the system was close to breaking even.<\/p>\n

And this week, Oregon Health & Science University, the state\u2019s flagship hospital, noted a \u201cdramatic financial turnaround.\u201d After two years of losses, OHSU had budgeted to lose $45 million on its operations in the fiscal year that just ended. But preliminary results actually show it with a positive margin of $181 million.<\/p>\n

In a statement, OHSU president Shereef Elnahal said the medical center achieved this feat not through cutting, but investing in its people. Indeed, data submitted to the state suggests OHSU costs continued to increase significantly. But, the university says, it figured out a way\u2014largely through high patient volume and complexity of care\u2014to raise revenue even more. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From a recent wave of financial reports, a remarkable statistic stands out: In 2015, hospitals in Oregon reported…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[51707,76575,23,230,574,26096,1302,7053,44186,25423,111477,4779,38011,10533,3235,192,44463,15058,97,252,253,164432,54906,220718,58166,1493,7264,58932,955,52519,2232,79224,50359,18223,11748,2862,220719,15686,10265,136584,38782,37425,220720,74335,23735,6145,23636,32432,24,3266,22192],"class_list":["post-797221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-aerial","tag-aerial-view","tag-america","tag-architecture","tag-blue","tag-building","tag-cars","tag-city","tag-clinic","tag-daylight","tag-destination","tag-development","tag-drone","tag-editorial","tag-emergency","tag-environment","tag-evening","tag-facility","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-healthcare-center","tag-helicopter","tag-helipad","tag-hills","tag-hospital","tag-infrastructure","tag-landscape","tag-medical","tag-modern","tag-oregon","tag-outdoor","tag-parking","tag-portland","tag-providence","tag-road","tag-rooftops","tag-scene","tag-sky","tag-skyline","tag-spring","tag-structure","tag-stvincent","tag-suburban","tag-sunset","tag-transportation","tag-trees","tag-urban","tag-usa","tag-view","tag-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}