Company: UHS
Filing Date: 2025-02-26
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000950170-25-027785
Chunk: 52

Company: UNIVERSAL HEALTH SERVICES INC
Filing Date: 2025-02-26
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 52
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 as a result, manufacturers and distributors continue to offer new and upgraded products to health care providers. To compete effectively, we must continually assess our equipment needs and upgrade when significant technological advances occur. If our facilities do not stay current with technological advances in the health care industry, patients may seek treatment from other providers and/or physicians may refer their patients to alternate sources, which could adversely affect our results of operations and harm our business.

Our performance depends on our ability to attract and retain qualified nurses and medical support staff and we face competition for staffing that may increase our labor costs and harm our results of operations.

We depend on the efforts, abilities, and experience of our medical support personnel, including our nurses, pharmacists and lab technicians and other healthcare professionals. We compete with other healthcare providers in recruiting and retaining qualified hospital management, nurses and other medical personnel.

The nationwide shortage of nurses and other clinical staff and support personnel has been a significant operating issue facing us and other healthcare providers. In particular, like others in the healthcare industry, we experienced a shortage of nurses and other clinical staff and support personnel at our acute care and behavioral health care hospitals in many geographic areas which was exacerbated by the COVID‑19 pandemic. In some areas, the increased demand for care during the COVID-19 pandemic put a strain on our resources and staff, which required us to utilize higher‑cost temporary labor and pay premiums above standard compensation for essential workers. Personnel shortages may require us to further enhance wages and benefits to recruit and retain nurses and other clinical staff and support personnel or require us to hire expensive temporary personnel. To the extent we cannot maintain sufficient staffing levels at our hospitals, we may be required to limit the acute and behavioral health care services provided at certain of our hospitals which would have a corresponding adverse effect on our net revenues. In addition, in some markets such as California, there are requirements to maintain specified nurse-staffing levels which could adversely affect our net revenues to the extent we cannot meet those levels. If these states increase mandatory nurse-staffing ratios or additional states in which we operate adopt mandatory nurse-staffing ratios, such changes could significantly affect labor costs and have an adverse impact on revenues if we are required to limit admissions in order to meet the required ratios.

We cannot predict the degree to which we will be affected by the future availability or cost of attracting and retaining talented medical support staff. If our general labor and related expenses increase, we may not be able to raise our rates correspondingly. Our failure to either recruit and retain qualified hospital management, nurses and