Officials at the officially nonprofit Sutter Medical Center, in Sacramento, are strenuously denying that the hospital is as profitable as a study asserts. The denials come after an article in HealthAffairs ranked the hospital second in America for highest profits from patient care, with total patient-care-services profit put at $271.9 million in the year in the study — 2o13.
Third was Stanford Hospital and Clinics in Palo Alto, also a not-for-profit facility.
In an e-mailed response to a query from The Sacramento Bee, a Sutter official called the results “fundamentally flawed.”
“Our initial analysis suggests that the authors missed $240 million of expenses, which significantly overstated Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento’s actual earnings,” said James Conforti, president of Sutter Health Valley Area. He told The Bee that at least two other hospitals on the study’s Top 10 list – Norton Hospital in Louisville, Ky., and Gundersen – had identified similar alleged inaccuracies.
