Ballad Health, an integrated healthcare system headquartered in northeastern Tennessee announced a 60-day furlough of 1,300 corporate staff. Nearly 1,100 of these are Tennesseans.
The company’s CEO, Alan Levine, said the company is projecting a $155 million loss over a 90 day period. Ballad is a rural healthcare system, and like many rural operators, it is being hit hard by the pandemic.
“In a region like ours that faces no population growth, that faces declining inpatient utilization rates, when you come out of this you can’t assume a hundred percent of that volume is going to return right away and it’s going to be very difficult to recover that lost cash
The furloughs will not include frontline staff, who have been guaranteed full-time hours. Ballad also announced that they will be suspending medical debt collection for 90 days for those impacted economically by the coronavirus pandemic.
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