Philadelphia-based Temple University Hospital has finalized the purchase of the former Cancer Treatment Center of America’s Philadelphia campus.
The hospital paid $12 million for the buildings, equipment and supplies at the former campus, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported July 9.
Boca Raton, Fla.-based Cancer Treatment Centers of America signed an agreement in March to sell the campus to Temple University Hospital.
“This opens a significant and historic new chapter in our Health System’s history — one which speaks to our improving clinical outcomes, operational efficiency, positive financial performance, and long-term strength of our organization,” said Michael Young, president and CEO of Temple University Health System and Temple University Hospital.
Temple Health said it is still working to determine the healthcare specialties the campus will house but said it will use the new location to replace the Temple Administrative Services Building as a first step.
Mounting evidence suggests the delta variant is the most contagious strain in the world, spreading about 225 percent faster than the original version of the virus. A small study published online July 7 may help explain why, NPR reported.
The delta variant, first identified in India, grows faster in people’s respiratory tracts and to much higher levels, according to researchers at the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention in China.
They analyzed virus levels in 62 people infected during China’s first delta variant outbreak between May 21 and June 18. They compared their findings to virus levels in 63 patients infected in 2020 by an earlier version of the virus.
On average, viral load was about 1,000 times higher for people infected with delta, compared to those infected with the earlier strain, researchers found. It also took about four days on average for delta to reach detectable levels in study participants, compared to six days for the other strain. This finding suggests people with delta likely become infectious sooner and are spreading the virus earlier in the course of their infection, researchers said.
The US Supreme Court recently announced that it will hear an ongoing debate over cuts to 340B drug payments to Medicare hospitals.
The case will be heard during the Supreme Court’s upcoming term, which starts in October. A decision is expected sometime next year.
The case was brought on by the American Hospital Association (AHA) and other national hospital groups seeking to overturn HHS’ decision to reduce Medicare reimbursement to hospitals in the 340B Drug Pricing Program by nearly 30 percent.
HHS had finalized the cuts in the 2018 Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) rule. The federal department said in a fact sheet that the cuts address the “recent trends of increasing drug prices, for which some of the cost burden falls to Medicare beneficiaries.”
Hospital groups led by the AHA challenged the cuts, arguing that reduced drug payments would harm access to care since the 340B Drug Pricing Program includes safety-net hospitals. An appeals court did not agree with their arguments in August 2020, ruling in favor of HHS.
“We are pleased that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the compelling arguments in our case on payments cuts to the 340B drug pricing program that are adversely impacting care to patients,” Melinda Hatton, the AHA’s general counsel, said publicly on Friday.
“We are hopeful that the Court will reject the appellate court decision deferring to the government’s interpretation of the law that clearly imperils the important services that the 340B program helps allow eligible hospitals and health systems to provide to vulnerable communities, many of which would otherwise be unavailable,” Hatton continued.
Other hospital groups also cheered the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the 340B drug payment case.
“We are pleased that the Supreme Court has agreed to review the appellate court decision, which we believe was legally flawed,” Maureen Testoni, CEO of 340B Health, said on the group’s website.* “We are hopeful that the justices will reverse the lower court decision that upheld these damaging cuts to many 340B hospitals treating patients with low incomes. In the meantime, we continue to urge the Biden administration to change this harmful policy by abandoning the payment cuts for 2022 and beyond.”
The other plaintiff, Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), also said it is looking forward to the consideration of the case.
“The current reimbursement rates reduce the 340B drug discounts granted to safety-net providers, many of which are teaching hospitals,”explained David J. Skorton, MD, AAMC president and CEO. “These hospitals use the current savings to deliver critical health care services to low-income and vulnerable patients, which includes providing free or substantially discounted drugs to low-income patients, establishing neighborhood clinics, and improving access to specialized care previously unavailable in some areas. A reversal of the cuts will ensure that low-income, rural, and other underserved patients and communities are able to access the vital services they need.”
Neither HHS nor CMS provided a public statement regarding the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the 340B drug payment case.
That’s the question business leaders are facing after Colorado lawmakers passed a bill requiring companies to post salary ranges for open or remote work positions in the state. California, Connecticut, Maryland, and Washington already have laws on the books mandating companies provide pay ranges to candidates who specifically ask for them or during an offer. The Colorado law takes it one step further by making companies proactively disclose the minimum and maximum salary as part of the job posting.
Though Colorado is the first state to make salary ranges available to any applicant, it won’t be the last, says Benjamin Frost, a solutions architect in Korn Ferry’s Products business. “The wind is clearly blowing in the direction of this becoming commonplace,” he says. Investors and employees want more transparency from companies, particularly around diversity, equity, and inclusion. Moreover, supporters argue providing salary ranges up front can help companies better match candidates to positions, making the hiring process more efficient.
But some companies, already under increasing wage pressure brought on by the hiring boom, apparently don’t see it that way: some recent job listings have specifically excluded candidates who live in Colorado from certain open positions. Frost says the move is less about Colorado’s talent pool and more about losing negotiating power with talent overall. “Excluding Colorado workers seems like a decent price to pay for not needing to disclose salary ranges at the moment,” he says. By contrast, he says, if and when a state like New York or California takes the step toward proactive disclosure, it will be a much bigger deal: “It is about talent pools and where companies can and can’t afford to close off access.”
Human resources leaders also argue that proactively providing pay ranges will actually make the recruiting process less, rather than more, efficient. For one, designating a salary range is tricky business. “You don’t want to limit the talent you get to look at,” says Andy De Marco, Korn Ferry’s vice president of human resources for the Americas. At the time, the range can be so broad that it could become arbitrary. A span of $100,000, for instance, expands the candidate pool and skills spectrum so much that it could slow down recruiting and, by extension, operations.
Excluding applicants from Colorado for now might give companies more time to clean up their pay practices, says Tom McMullen, a Korn Ferry senior client partner and a leader in the firm’s Total Rewards practice. He notes that posting pay ranges could expose internal inequities leaders aren’t yet prepared to deal with. For instance, suppose a company posts a range of $80,000 to $100,000 for a role, but an existing employee is still earning the minimum number after five years with the firm. “How upset will that employee be after seeing this posted range?” asks McMullen.
To be sure, optics are a huge part of the disclosure calculus for leaders. McMullen says companies are running out of time to institute fairer pay practices on their own before regulators push them to do so. “Employees will give their leaders credit for making these changes proactively,” he says.
Here are three insightful and thought-provoking facts that most people aren’t aware of and the potential implications of these statistics / trends on healthcare stakeholders.
Fact 1: The third leading cause of death in the U.S. is due to medical error According to a study by Johns Hopkins, more than 250,000 people in the United States die every year because of medical mistakes, making it the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. Some studies show the death rate as high as 440,000 deaths per year. To put that in perspective, approximately 350,000 people died from COVID-19 in 2020, which, similar to medical error, was no fault of their own. A medical error death “is caused by inadequately skilled staff, error in judgment or care, a system defect, or a preventable adverse effect. This includes computer breakdowns, mix-ups with the doses or types of medications administered to patients and surgical complications that go undiagnosed.”
Fact 2: Medicare’s trustees report that the Part A trust fund will be insolvent by 2024 Medicare – Part A, which pays for hospital bills, is funded mainly through the payroll taxes. According to the report, without changes to expected spending or trust fund revenue, the fund will run dry in 2024 and have sufficient funds only to meet 90% of its obligations. This is the second time insolvency has been predicted within five years. Without any changes the shortfall would have to be covered by one or more of the following potential options: (i) add new revenue, which equates to increasing the payroll tax rate, (ii) raise the share of costs shouldered by enrollees, (iii) cut benefits, or (iv) reduce payments to healthcare providers.
Fact 3: The last decade was the lowest population growth rate ever recorded U.S. Population Growth for Decades The U.S. population growth of 6.6% between 2010 and 2020 is lower than in any previous decade, including the Great Depression years of the 1930s. It is also roughly half the growth rate of the 1990s, a time of rising immigration and millennial-generation births.
The 2010s decade was one of fewer births, more deaths, and uneven immigration, but the primary cause of this dramatic decline is highly related to falling U.S. fertility rates.
The U.S. fertility rate has been falling steadily and as of recently stood at 1.7 births per woman (ratio of number of births in a year to total population of women between the ages of 15 and 50), the lowest level on record. Some experts hope that the decline is “temporary” and that Millennials are postponing family formation as they are burdened with debt and struggle with launching careers and establishing households. However, there is no clear sign of an any uptick, and, to make matters worse, net immigration has also declined since 2008.
The data is clear that the aging of America is inevitable, and the prospects for higher fertility rates look dim. Even if the fertility rate were to surge today, it would not have an appreciable effect on the ratio of workers to retirees or the growth rate in employment for another twenty to twenty-five years (the time it takes to turn an infant into a fully productive adult).
Conclusion What does the third leading cause of death in the U.S., Medicare Part A near-term insolvency projections, and declining population growth have in common? All of these alarming realities can be solved through value-based care. Value-based care is an alternative system for how providers are rewarded for care and incentivizes the quality of care they give to people, rather than the volume of services. Another way to put it, providers and health systems will not be paid for medical error deaths and instead be rewarded for quality of patient care and outcomes. Because of this alternative payment system, healthcare stakeholders will be forced to invest in technology, tools, and resources so that healthcare providers and workers can make better quality decisions. Technology will help alleviate staff shortages, improve medical treatment accuracies, increase productivity, and enable organizations to do more with less.
The alarming medical error rate is proof that our traditional healthcare system and payment models are flawed, and that the need to move into a value-based care world is a must. Imagine if the third leading cause of death in the U.S. were caused by commercial airline pilot errors. The industry would crumble overnight. The healthcare sector and our standards for care should be no different.
To add fuel to the fire, we have an impending insolvency issue with Medicare Part A funding combined with population growth trends that will result in a much wider gap between the working and an aging population in need of care. The working population decline will also have a downstream impact of less working providers / medical staff to take care of patients, as well as fewer contributing taxpayers. These trends, if left as is, will guarantee a very imbalanced, underfunded and extremely lopsided healthcare ecosystem.
Healthcare stakeholders need to think about reorienting provider compensation to encourage value over volume, invest in much needed tools, such as strong data analytics and reporting, so that the right decisions and diagnoses are made at the right time. Lastly, we need to shift care away from costly and error-prone hospitals and create innovative care models that deliver better care in a cost-effective manner. In essence, we need to do more with less. The aging and demographic shift of America is inevitable; however, the fiscal, economic, and potential healthcare catastrophe is not if we prepare, adapt, and transition to a value-based care world today
Dollar General hired its first CMO and plans to become a destination for affordable healthcare offerings.
The retail giant will bring an increased assortment of medical, dental and health aids to its shelves as part of its first major jump into the healthcare industry, according to a July 7 news release.
Three things to know:
In the United States, 75 percent of the population lives within five miles of one of the chain’s 17,400 stores. The chain recognizes that it’s postured to deliver care to rural communities that are traditionally underserved in the healthcare ecosystem, the release said.
“At Dollar General, we are always looking for new ways to serve, and our customers have told us that they would like to see increased access to affordable healthcare products and services in their communities,” said Todd Vasos, Dollar General CEO. “Our goal is to build and enhance affordable healthcare offerings for our customers, especially in the rural communities we serve.”
The chain selected Albert Wu, MD, as its first CMO and vice president. Dr. Wu will strengthen relationships with healthcare service providers to build a network for its customers. In his previous position, Dr. Wu worked at McKinsey, where he oversaw the care model for 250,000 rural patients and drove $2-5 billion in revenue.
Blood centers in some U.S. cities are down to a one-day supply, forcing hospitals to postpone surgeries. The blood shortage is yet another fallout from the pandemic, experts say.
OneBlood, the Southeast’s largest blood center, is scrambling to manage the blood shortage crisis.
“It’s a 24/7 operation,” said OneBlood’s Susan Forbes. “The donors are not in the traditional locations anymore. We lost large corporations, religious organizations, movie theater drives, festivals that were taking place ended.”
Before COVID-19 shutdowns, schools accounted for 25% of collected blood. Now, demand for blood products is up 10% nationwide.
Some hospitals have had to delay scheduled surgeries. At NYU Langone Health in New York City, surgeon-in-chief Dr. Paresh Shah said they came close to doing the same.
“There’s this huge backlog of operations that really needed to get done,” Shah said. “We were down to such a low inventory of blood that if we had one major transfusion event, we would have been depleted completely.”
He said the lack of blood can mean life or death in trauma situations.
Eleven-year-old Iggy Friday was diagnosed with Leukemia this winter and has needed more than 30 transfusions during chemotherapy. His recent platelet transfusion was delayed because of the shortage — luckily for just a few hours.
“I did think about the people who needed it now and stuff. So that’s why I was fine with waiting,” he said. “It helps a lot of people and can save a lot of lives.”
HENRY KOTULA 