Impact of COVID-19 on our finances
The umbrella organizations of hospitals, UMCs and health insurers together made national agreements for 2022 to offer compensation to hospitals and UMCs for providing COVID-19 care. These agreements are in addition to the regular agreements that are signed bilaterally each year between hospitals, UMCs and health insurers. And in addition to the agreements that UMC Utrecht made with health insurers for 2022. The national agreements are a solution for risks related to COVID-19 that cannot be solved bilaterally. They offer a guarantee for care continuity. The compensation is for IC days and nursing days of COVID-19 patients, an availability compensation for the upscaling of IC beds, and compensation for extra costs due to the delivery of COVID-19 care. Agreements were also made for financial compensation of lost productivity due to the delivery of COVID-19 care. Finally, a hardship clause gives hospitals and UMCs a guarantee that there will be no financial result below zero due to insufficient compensation for COVID-19 care. With the national agreements in 2022, and the similar agreements made for the COVID-19 years 2020 and 2021, the uncertainties due to COVID-19 in the settlement of the 2020, 2021 and 2022 ( claim) years have been limited.
All stakeholders, such as hospitals, health insurers, the safety region and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports, worked hard in the past three years on a basis of trust. And they reacted fast to mitigate the different financial risks that COVID-19 had brought for healthcare, education and research. This is good to see. As a result, however, we did have to deal with stacking arrangements from 2020, 2021 and 2022 when preparing the 2022 financial statement. And with uncertainties about the details of the arrangements and the use and accountability of funds received. We took account of these uncertainties in drawing up the financial statement.
Besides our core tasks - healthcare, education and research - our underlying operational management and (strategic) programs/projects have also been affected by COVID-19. Due to the considerable pressure on our staff and organization, we had to make choices and determine priorities with regard to our programs/projects. Some activities could still proceed in whole or in part in 2022 (including the Tomorrow's Care movement). Other programs/projects had to be postponed. The latter include projects related to the implementation of our Strategic Accommodation Plan (SAP).
