Cartoon – A Matter of Opinion
Monthly Archives: June 2019
Cartoon – A Little Room to Negotiate
My Goal
Wayne State tab for physician group bankruptcy may top $16 million
Wayne State University is fronting what could potentially total more than $16 million in payments for the School of Medicine’s faculty practice, University Physician Group, to rebuild after bankruptcy.
U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Detroit last Monday approved UPG’s reorganization plan and exit from bankruptcy after the nonprofit medical practice suddenly filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November.
After “extensive negotiations” with UPG, Wayne State agreed to provide financial assistance under a restructuring support agreement, according to a version of the reorganization plan submitted April 9.
A 15-year term loan from Wayne State will be used to pay 80 percent of unsecured claims that are currently projected at approximately $10.7 million, but could rise as court proceedings are finalized, according to a document in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Detroit.
The Detroit university is also providing a revolving loan of at least $2.5 million that could range up to $7.5 million for UPG’s working capital needs.
A Wayne State representative declined to provide additional comment on the restructuring plan.
The November bankruptcy filing was driven by discovery earlier in that year that financial losses of the 20-year-old faculty practice plan were double the $5.5 million expected and a new, more drastic turnaround plan was required, Crain’s reported at the time. Over the past decade, UPG’s number of physicians declined by 50 percent, which hurt clinical revenue and made its leased network of suburban offices untenable, the filing said.
The court-approved reorganization strategy created with consulting firm AlixPartners will help determine the future of UPG. It is expected to carry UPG from its 2018 loss of $8.1 million to $3 million in profit by 2022, according to the release and reorganization documents.
To carry out the reorganization, the practice plan’s leadership formed six interdisciplinary teams to “transform and modernize” financial operations, its footprint, patient access, doctor compensation, business relationships and organization culture, among other things, last week’s news release said.
Closing clinics
As part of restructuring, UPG is shrinking the amount of clinical space it operates from 260,000 square feet to 115,000 by the end of the year, Charles Shanley, M.D., University Physician Group’s president and CEO, told Crain’s on Tuesday. The practice plan downsized sites in Southfield, Dearborn and Livonia and closed its clinical practice locations in Lake Orion and Port Huron, as well as a surgical center in Troy.
“We desperately needed to consolidate and modernize the clinical footprint,” he said.
UPG is shrinking to seven sites, Shanley added. The large majority are in Midtown Detroit, with UPG opting to focus its presence less on the suburbs and more in Detroit and at WSU’s School of Medicine.
“We are on a path to be a leading urban academic practice, in a thriving city, recognized for innovative delivery of high-value care to the most complex and vulnerable members of the community,” Shanley said in the release. “Our future lies in streamlining access for the Detroit community … to high-quality and cost-effective care in collaboration with Detroit’s primary care physicians, federally qualified health centers, the Detroit Medical Center, Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and Henry Ford Health System.”
The practice plan employs 244 physicians, with 23 more who have been hired and are in the credentialing process. A net total of five physicians have left since the bankruptcy filing.
UPG has been looking since last summer at sites around Midtown where it could create a multidisciplinary ambulatory site, allowing patients to walk a short distance to another specialist doctor instead of needing to travel to another facility.
It’s also looking at locations in Midtown where it could shift its administrative offices from Troy. That move-out is expected to finish by the end of October, marking the end of the site consolidation process.
Henry Ford, DMC ties
The November filing came several weeks after UPG and the Detroit Medical Center reached a five-year contract in September for clinical and medical administrative services. The deal renewed a longtime affiliation between the for-profit hospital chain owned by Tenet Healthcare Corp. of Dallas and the Wayne State group, appearing to calm what had been a disintegrating relationship.
UPG’s financial crisis — alongside mismanagement, lack of teamwork and other issues — have shown it will likely never become the large, profitable group envisioned by former Wayne State Medical School Dean John Crissman in 1999, Crain’s previously reported.
Wayne State University’s medical school also needs to look at revenue options to replace what it would have taken in through an affiliation deal with Henry Ford Health System, according to previous Crain’s reporting. Henry Ford Health System CEO Wright Lassiter III pulled the plug in March after months of negotiations.
The bankruptcy is unrelated to WSU’s negotiations with Henry Ford Health System, Shanley told Crain’s on Tuesday.
“I think there’s general enthusiasm among the leadership of the school of medicine and the university to maintain and enhance our relationship with Henry Ford and resume conversations toward a synergistic partnership,” he said. “We’re all enthusiastic and supportive of that. It’s critical to the mission of the school of medicine and it’s good for the city of Detroit. I think it’s just a matter of reinitiating those discussions.”
Healthcare consolidation goes beyond usual players
Consolidation in the health system and health insurance industries has been a focus for years. But a new report sheds light on how the “bigger is better” mantra has taken hold in companies that make syringes, X-ray machines or other healthcare products.
The report, prepared by the Open Markets Institute using data from IBISWorld, shows a small handful of companies dominate their respective markets in certain healthcare sectors that tend to get less of a spotlight than their payer and provider counterparts. The largest three pharmacy and drugstore companies represent 67% of market share and the largest two ambulance manufacturers represent 83% of market share. Just two dialysis providers dominate 76% of market share.
Open Markets has released data on monopolization in other sectors of the economy, and Phil Longman, the group’s policy director, said with healthcare approaching 20% of the U.S. gross domestic product, it’s important to direct attention there, too.
Pharmacy benefit management draws $453.4 billion in revenue, according to the report, and just four companies hold three-quarters of its market share: CVS, Express Scripts, UnitedHealth and Humana. The four largest healthcare consulting firms represent 76% of their sector, which draws $6 billion in revenue.
Two companies, LabCorp and Quest, have 37% of diagnostic and medical laboratory market share, a $52.6 billion industry, the report said. And three of the largest medical patient financing companies, Synchrony, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, make up 77% of that market, which draws $4.1 billion in revenue.
The report highlighted consolidation across several different healthcare manufacturers, including those that produce hospital beds, surgical apparel, PET imaging, pacemakers and wheelchairs. Three firms own 88% of the $10.6 billion orthopedic products manufacturing sector: Stryker Corp., Zimmer Holdings and Johnson & Johnson.
Healthcare in the U.S. costs more than in other countries because the prices are higher, Longman said. That’s almost always because there is a barrier to entry that thwarts competition. Longman noted that health systems typically purchase the supplies they need, from bed sheets to bandages, from group purchasing organizations.
“That adds up to serious money,” he said.
One of the factors driving consolidation across these subsectors of healthcare is the continued decline in government and commercial health insurance reimbursement for medical products and services, which puts the squeeze on the associated costs like equipment and doctor’s fees, said Beth Everett, managing director of healthcare banking and head of middle-market healthcare with MUFG in New York. Consolidation may help achieve healthcare cost reduction by creating economies of scale, she said. Whether this ultimately happens is “the million-dollar question,” Everett said.
Greater consolidation and integration in the healthcare system is widely recognized as necessary for improving patient care, Longman said. But it should come with some means of regulation to ensure the benefits of the resulting efficiencies go to the consumer. In this case, that hasn’t happened, and monopolistic corporations are holding the benefits of greater scale, efficiencies and coordination of care rather than passing them along.
“We’ve just really mismanaged competition policy in healthcare,” Longman said.
Time Does Not Change People …
CVS announces aggressive expansion plans
https://cvshealth.com/newsroom/press-releases/cvs-health-outlines-strategy-accelerate-growth
In a presentation to investors this week, retail pharmacy giant CVS Health announced plans to expand its “HealthHUB” store concept, first launched at three store locations in Houston, to 1,500 stores in the next three years.
The new store concept, built to take advantage of CVS’s 2018 acquisition of health insurer Aetna, is centered around providing more extensive care management and wellness services than traditionally available at the chain’s Minute Clinics. In addition to Houston, the company is targeting Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Tampa, all in states where Aetna’s existing insurance footprint and the new care offerings can be combined to create new benefit designs and consumer engagement approaches.
In a wide-ranging discussion of the company’s future strategies, CVS executives also outlined plans for delivering home-based dialysis, expanded in-store primary care services, and further expansion of virtual care. In sum, CVS is banking on its ability to lower care costs for health plan enrollees and increase use of its clinic services to grow incremental revenue by $850M in the next three years, and $2.5B longer term.
We continue to view CVS as an entirely new kind of healthcare delivery company, bringing together convenient, lower-acuity care services and a risk model that will allow it to prosper by reducing the cost of care and building consumer loyalty. The speed of CVS’s rollout of this new value proposition should be a wake-up call to traditional healthcare providers everywhere.
A look at the changing ROI of employing doctors
Click to access MerrittHawkins_PressRelease_2019.pdf
A recent report from Merritt Hawkins provided an opportunity for us to test out a new, interactive tool for data visualization this week. The recruiter surveyed hospital Chief Financial Officers about the “return on investment” (ROI) they expect from employing physicians. The report compared average salaries paid to key specialties with the anticipated “downstream” revenue each physician is expected to produce for the hospital or health system.
To explore the data, click on the graphic below—you’ll be able to see where each specialty ranked, and (by clicking between tabs), see how the expected ROI has changed since the last time the survey was conducted in 2016. We’ve grouped the doctors into three categories: primary care; medical specialists; and proceduralists.
A few interesting highlights from exploring the data: employed physician salaries rose for every single specialty across the past three years. While specialists may bring in more revenue per doctor, primary care physicians continue to have the highest return on investment of physician salary dollars.
But take a look at the change in size of the bubbles, representing ROI, between 2016 and 2019. ROI remained pretty stable for both adult primary care and the specialists who support high-margin services like orthopedics, neurosurgery and obstetrics.
In contrast, the highest ROI growth is seen in pediatrics and psychiatry—suggesting systems are finding new ways to link these specialties to downstream services. Let us know what you think of this interactive tool, and what other kinds of analysis you think might be interesting using it. (We think it’s pretty nifty.)
Drivers of Health, a New Project
There is broad consensus that the U.S. spends too much on health care. Some feel that we would be better served by investing more on factors outside of the health system that affect health — so-called social determinants of health.
However, we lack reliable evidence to indicate where and how much to invest. Should we spend more on education or on the environment? Housing or nutrition? While there have been attempts to quantify the contribution of various factors to health, most have significant methodological limitations and do not incorporate more recent evidence.
As part of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded project, my team and I have organized a series of workshops to consider these questions. The first meeting “Refining the Question, ‘What Affects Health?” will be held on Monday, June 17, 1-5:15pm at the Weston Princeton in Princeton, NJ. David Cutler and Paula Braveman will speak about the wide range of factors that influence health and engage with the project’s committee — led by Ashish Jha and Sherry Glied — and others in attendance who wish to contribute. Details and registration on the DriversOfHealth.org website. Please RSVP and attend!
I would greatly appreciate it if you would share this invitation and project with anyone you think may be interested — your department, students, and other colleagues, friends, family, neighbors, etc.
Also, please explore, share, and revisit our project website, which includes an interactive (and more interactives to come), ways to engage on the project’s topics, and a blog that we will add to every week.
HENRY KOTULA 