Inside West Virginia Politics

In segment one, Jim Kaufman, President and CEO of the West Virginia Hospital Association, joins us as we overview how hospitals are doing during the pandemic after the miscount of reported COVID-19 deaths.Early in March, Health officials have identified 165 deaths related to COVID-19 that were unreported. Kaufman says paperwork flow and human error were the main causes of the unreported deaths.Kaufman addresses the issue, saying that the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) did an audit of the deaths associated with COVID-19 and said they were able to identify the issue and made sure they were accurate.In Segment two, Jim Kaufman, President and CEO of the West Virginia Hospital Association, says many West Virginia hospitals in our area have been suffering a “financial shortfall” of $400 million between March 2020 and March 2021.The latest COVID-19 aid bill from Congress provides $8.3 billion for hospitals nationwide and it couldn’t come soon enough. Kaufman says a lot of revenue was l