Clipsheet

UW Health is expecting to lose between $350-400 million in revenue between March 15 and June 30, after postponing thousands of surgeries and procedures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“We worry that at some point that if we were to see a large surge, or if we had many large surges in the country, the supply of N95s may not keep up with how we need to use them,” said Dr. Jeff Pothof, the UW Health chief quality officer.

“We are now going to be able to offer testing to people who are symptomatic, but are not having severe symptoms, who may not necessarily be high risk,” UW Health Chief Quality Officer Dr. Jeff Pothof said. “It helps us understand the prevalence of the disease in the community, but two, it allows us to contact trace.”

A spokesperson for UW Health, Emily Kumlien, explained they avoided pay cuts for those employees to make sure everyone who’s treating COVID-19 patients were affected. She added that the health system will expand its flexing policy in response to work volume.

UW Hospital is sterilizing N-95 respirators just in case they need them for the future.

In an email sent to employees, UW Health CEO Alan Kaplan said that the CEO, senior executives and clinincal department chairs would take a temporary pay cut of 20%. All vice-presidents, faculty physicians, non-physician faculty physicists and faculty clinical psychologists will all take a 15% pay cut. All directors, managers and non-physician providers will take a 10% pay cut.

While Dr. Jeff Pothoff at UW Health said he’s been pleased with the community’s response to the stay-at-home order, he said that re-opening the state soon would be a bad decision.

UW Health utilized its own data in attempt to predict COVID-19 peak.