WSHA strives to ensure that all our state’s diverse communities and patients have access to high-quality and equitable health care. Hospitals provide the only lifesaving care to patients – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Hospitals provide both inpatient and outpatient care, everything from primary to specialty care. They continue to face challenges to deliver care as patient demand exceeds workforce capabilities and complex patients remain in hospitals long after they are ready for discharge.
In 2023, Washington’s hospitals employed more than 117,000 people. Hospitals statewide provided more than $490 million in charity care – an increase of more than $100 million annually since 2020. In 2022, hospitals invested more than $200 million in community-building activities. Hospitals also absorbed close to $3 billion in government payer shortfalls (Medicare and Medicaid).
Hospital systems are the only providers mandated by the state to provide charity care. Hospital systems are often the only providers seeing Medicaid and Medicare patients. Nonprofit hospital systems are the only providers mandated to provide community benefits. While hospital systems do have property tax relief, this is more than offset by the charity care, Medicare and Medicaid costs that hospitals subsidized. Acute care hospitals in our states are almost all non-profit or public hospital districts.
WSHA’s 2025 legislative priorities are grounded in the following key principles:
- Ensure patients have health coverage and access throughout the care continuum before, during and after hospitalization.
- Ensure hospitals are financially stable institutions serving their communities, long into the future.
- Maintain flexibility for hospital operations while mitigating new regulations that often add costs and complexity to the care hospitals deliver.