Monthly Archives: March 2017

PinnacleHealth pursues affiliation with UPMC, inks deal to acquire 4 CHS hospitals

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , • Leave a comment

http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-transactions-and-valuation/pinnaclehealth-pursues-affiliation-with-upmc-signs-deal-to-acquire-4-chs-hospitals.html

Image result for pinnacle health

PinnacleHealth, a three-hospital system based in Harrisburg, Pa., announced Tuesday it is expanding its network of acute care hospitals and also looking to partner with a bigger system.

PinnacleHealth signed a definitive agreement to acquire four Pennsylvania hospitals from Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems, which will more than double the number of hospitals in its network. The following hospitals are included in the transaction:

  • 100-bed Memorial Hospital of York (Pa.)
  •  214-bed Lancaster (Pa.) Regional Medical Center
  •  148-bed Heart of Lancaster Regional Medical Center in Lititz, Pa.
  • 165-bed Carlisle (Pa.) Regional Medical Center.

CHS said it expects the transaction, which is subject to customary regulatory approvals, to close this summer. CHS is selling the hospitals as part of a turnaround plan it put into place last year. The company is selling 25 hospitals to trim its debt load.

PinnacleHealth is also looking to expand its reach through a partnership with Pittsburgh-based UPMC. The two systems have signed a letter of intent to pursue an affiliation and have begun the due diligence process.

“Having PinnacleHealth affiliate with UPMC is an exciting opportunity for the system and central Pennsylvania,” said Philip W. Guarneschelli, president and CEO of PinnacleHealth. “Affiliation supports geographic expansion and introduces more choices for health insurance through a provider-sponsored health plan.”

As both a provider organization and an insurer, UPMC includes more than 25 hospitals, a 3 million-member insurance division and 600 physicians’ offices and outpatient sites.

 

Tax Credits under the Affordable Care Act vs. the American Health Care Act: An Interactive Map

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , • Leave a comment

Premiums and Tax Credits Under the Affordable Care Act vs. the American Health Care Act: Interactive Maps

Image result for Tax Credits under the Affordable Care Act vs. the American Health Care Act: An Interactive Map

These maps compare county-level estimates of premium tax credits consumers would receive under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2020 with what they’d receive under the American Health Care Act as unveiled March 6 by Republican leaders in Congress.

The maps include premium tax credit estimates by county for current ACA marketplace enrollees at age 27, 40, or 60 with an annual income of $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $75,000, or $100,000. A downloadable spreadsheet of this data is available, as is a spreadsheet with family scenarios, including a family of four with two 40-year old adults and two children, as well as a 60-year-old couple with no dependent children. (Note: the map and spreadsheets do not include cost-sharing assistance under the ACA that lowers deductibles and copayments for low-income marketplace enrollees. For example, in 2016, people making between 100 – 150% of poverty enrolled in a silver plan on healthcare.gov received cost-sharing assistance worth $1,440; those with incomes between 150 – 200% of poverty received $1,068 on average; and those with incomes between 200 – 250% of poverty received $144 on average).

Generally, people who are older, lower-income, or live in high-premium areas (like Alaska and Arizona) receive larger tax credits under the ACA than they would under the American Health Care Act replacement.

Conversely, some people who are younger, higher-income, or live in low-premium areas (like Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Washington) may receive larger assistance under the replacement plan.

Most current Healthcare.gov enrollees have lower incomes:

  • About 66% of have incomes at or below 250% of poverty (approximately $31,250 for a single individual in 2020), with the bulk (44% of all enrollees) having incomes at or below 150% of poverty (approximately $18,750 in 2020).
  • About 36% of enrollees are under age 35, 37% are age 35 to 54, and 27% are 55 or older.

Both the ACA and the American Health Care Act include tax credits in their approach. However, the law and the proposal calculate credit amounts differently: the ACA takes family income, local cost of insurance, and age into account, while the replacement proposal bases tax credits only on age, with a phase out for individuals with incomes above $75,000.

 

Major Hospitals are Offering Alternative Therapies. Is This Medicine?

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , • Leave a comment

http://bigthink.com/21st-century-spirituality/major-hospitals-are-offering-alternative-therapies-is-this-medicine

Article Image

You check in at the hospital for chronic back pain. The doctor asks you to follow her past the MRI machines and operating room to a recently converted yoga studio. An unrolled mat awaits. En route you peek your head into an adjacent treatment room to watch an acupuncturist needling a patient. Rows of IV drips and homeopathic remedies line the shelves. 

This not uncommon scene plays out in many small centers across the nation. Yet as Stat News reports, some of the country’s top hospitals and institutions are offering the same modalities, to mixed reviews. Staff and administrators claim to be listening to patient desires. Critics state this is not good medicine. 

Part of the problem is that the numerous therapeutic modalities existing outside of the purview of ‘Western’ medicine are lumped together into the ambiguous ‘alternative therapies.’ Yoga and meditation, for example, have been clinically studied over the last few decades, showing promising results for pain relief, anxiety, and cognitive functioning. Homeopathy and ‘energy healing,’ however, have at best been shown to be no better than the placebo response. 

When dealing with the common cold, using an ineffective or unproven therapy such as a homeopathic proving is largely benign—the placebo response might prove helpful in such circumstances. But this trend is more insidious, Stat reports. The “spa-like wellness centers” are branding their own forms of mysticism, offering questionable treatments for cancer, heart disease, and chronic pain. 

Duke even markets a pediatric program that suggests on its website that alternative medicine, including “detoxification programs” and “botanical medicines,” can help children with conditions ranging from autism to asthma to ADHD.

Separating wheat from chaff is challenging in the modern medical environment. Our emotions and perceptions really do play a role in healing, a major criticism of the ‘cold mechanisms’ of Western medicine. One 1984 study found that the view from your hospital room influences healing time; more recent research suggests that hospital gardens are effective in speeding recovery. This makes sense as our environment always affects our nervous and immune systems. Being in a calm, peaceful space or gazing at a mountain lifts our mood, which aids healing. 

Is Your Company Using Employee Data Ethically?

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , • Leave a comment

https://hbr.org/2017/03/is-your-company-using-employee-data-ethically?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+harvardbusiness+%28HBR.org%29

mar17-13-696134597

Potter Stewart, justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, once said, “Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have the right to do and what is right to do.” Associate Justice Stewart probably didn’t know how new data technologies would soon begin to blur those boundaries.

With the emergence of new information technologies, corporations can now amass and analyze unprecedented volumes of unstructured data — the data created by humans, such as the text contained in company documents, email, instant messaging, and social media. Collecting this data was originally driven by the obligation to produce evidence for litigation, to preserve business records, and to respond to regulators’ demands for information, but it has now dawned on corporations that all of that data can open up new vistas of management capabilities, such as visualizing employee interactions, mapping domain expertise, replaying past events, tracking employee sentiment, and providing insights into all human activity across the organization.

These capabilities are creating much excitement, angst, and debate. While the benefits are clearly far-reaching and potentially game changing, there are ethical questions to consider. When companies collect all the data their employees generate, there’s always the risk that employee privacy will be sacrificed for profit.

Consider the following ways that companies are using employee data: