A looming ‘tsunami’ of church closings is poised to remake America | CNN
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Experts project an estimated 100,000 churches in the US will close or be repurposed over the next decade. This dire forecast is outlined in a new PBS documentary series, “Christianity at a Crossroads.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/52667802

Experts project an estimated 100,000 churches in the US will close or be repurposed over the next decade.

Many churches will be unable to escape this “tsunami” of closings — a grim trajectory one pastor described as, “Every year the pews are getting emptier and the collection plates getting lighter.”

  • Zephorah@discuss.onlineEnglish
    1·
    18 hours ago

    Hospitals tend to be profitable, religious affiliated or otherwise. Religion, aside from some seventh day adventist institutions, tends to be more veneer. Business CEOs and doctors gone over to business run them, not actual nuns or religious leaders.

    It would be highly unusual for an urban hospital, in an area where doctors want to live and work, to go out of business. Medicine is contingent on location, locations where doctors want to live and work. For hospitals, that means specialists and surgeons, because that’s where the money is.

    The loss leader of medicine is mother baby, and NICU. The latter are commonly referred to a million dollar babies, and that was well before 2020 inflation happened. Birth centers exist in the red, which is why not every hospital has one. Surgeons in other areas earn the money to support a birth center. That gastric bypass? That open heart surgery? Paying for mother baby to stay open.

    When hospitals close birth centers or rural locations it’s not about religion, it’s straight up income stream based on earning doctors at that location, or how capable the city location is at covering the rural location while still maintaining profit.

    Non-profit is a tax status that isn’t what it sounds like. There is always profit for a hospital or it would be closed.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      17 hours ago

      Hospitals tend to be profitable

      we saw a wave of closures two years ago, and are about to see another one when the medicaid cuts hit after the november elections.

      • Zephorah@discuss.onlineEnglish
        1·
        2 hours ago

        Very likely going to be a focused rural and birth center hit. Rural hospitals have a 60% reliance on Medicare/Medicaid as their baseline income stream. Even then, Medicaid benefits never cover the actual cost of giving birth, only a portion.

        Major urban areas lean on the 30% side for Medicare/Medicaid dependence. Again, it’s all about the capacity to provide things like cardiac cath lab, gastric bypass, knee replacement, etc. All the specialty areas that require specialty doctors to want to live in the area. They won’t close.

        There was already a wave of downsizing and penny pinching in response to the Big Betrayal Bill passing. Layoffs. Closures of less lucrative units. Less new grad hires. Weekend programs dissolving. Ancillary staff like supply runners, housekeeping, phlebotomy, transport, the people who answer the phones, all cut back by both position # and hours. A lot of night shift in transport and supply were laid off. And dietary. Forget selecting, you get what you get and don’t eat if you don’t like it. Even nurses were cut.

        All of that in quiet anticipation.

        But yes, your rural hospitals, especially birth centers, will likely close.