Category Archives: Credit

Saying farewell (for now) to a terrible financial quarter

Posted on by • Posted in Board, Budget, Budget Cuts, Business Model, Cost Management, Cost Reduction, Credit, Credit Downgrade, Credit Quality, Credit Ratings, Financial Forecast, Financial Pressure, Financial Reporting, Financial Stewardship, Financial Viability, Financially Distressed, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Labor Spend Management, Net Income, Nonoperating Income, Nurse Agency Staffing, Operating Expense Reduction, Operating Expenses, Operating Income, Operating Margin, Operating Metrics, Operating Performance, Operating Revenue, Supply Chain • Leave a comment
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Judging from our recent conversations with health system executives, we’d guess CEOs across the industry woke up this morning glad to see the first quarter in the rearview mirror.

Almost everyone we’ve spoken to has told us that the past three months have been miserable from an operating margin perspective—skyrocketing labor costs, rising drug and supply prices, and stubbornly long length of stay, particularly among Medicare patients.

In the words of one CFO, “I’ve never seen anything like this. For the first time, we budgeted for a negative margin, and still didn’t hit our target. I’m not sure how long our board will let us stay on this trajectory before things change.”

Yet few of the drivers of poor financial performance appear to be temporary. Perhaps the over-reliance on agency nursing staff will wane as COVID volumes bottom out (for how long remains unknown), but overall labor costs will remain high, there’s no immediate relief for supply chain issues, and COVID-related delays in care have left many patients sicker—and thus in need of more costly care. Plus, the lifeline of federal relief funds is rapidly dwindling, if not already gone.

Expect the next three quarters (and beyond) to bring a greater focus on cost cutting, especially as not-for-profit systems struggle to defend their bond ratings in the face of rising interest rates.

Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy landing.

Credit monitoring companies are removing most medical debt from consumer credit reports

Posted on by • Posted in Access, Access & Quality of Healthcare, Credit, Credit Ratings, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, High Deductible Health Plans, Medical Debt, Out of Pocket Expenses • Leave a comment
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Spurred by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s investigation into how credit companies report medical debt, TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian—the country’s three largest credit bureaus, who keep records on 200M Americans—are revising how they report medical debt.

As a result, the companies could eliminate up to 70 percent of medical debt from consumers’ credit reports. Starting in July, medical debts paid after going to collections will no longer appear on credit reports, and unpaid debts won’t be added until a year after being sent to collections (instead of six months, per current policy). And beginning in 2023, medical debts of less than $500 will also be excluded from credit reports altogether.

The Gist:The poorest and sickest patients have been disproportionately saddled with the highest levels of medical debt. In 2017, 19 percent of US households carried medical debt, including many with private insurance. 

While these changes will help mitigate the impact of medical debt for some, they aren’t a fix to the larger underlying problem of rising healthcare costs and access to adequate health insurance coverage. 

Colin Powell’s 13 Rules for Leadership

Posted on by • Posted in Balanced Ego, Calm, Choice, Confidence, Credit, Decision Making, Decision Making Authority, Demanding, Fear, Force Multiplier, Leadership, Leadership Culture, Leadership Integrity, Leadership Respect, Leadership Skill Sets, Leadership Trust, Leadership Vision, Perpetual Optimism, Rules • Leave a comment
COLIN POWELL'S 13 RULES FoR LEADERSHIP 1. IT AIN'T AS BAD AS YOU THINK. IT

Hospital margins could sink to a negative 7% this year: 5 things to know

Posted on by • Posted in Bankruptcy, Cash, Cash Reserves, Cash-Flow Improvements, Coronavirus, Credit, Credit Quality, Credit Ratings, Crisis, Crisis Management, Economic Stimulus, Financial Pressure, Financial Viability, Financially Distressed, Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Net Income, Nonoperating Income, Operating Expenses, Operating Income, Operating Margin, Operating Performance, Operating Revenue, Pandemic, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Supply Chain, The CARES Act • Leave a comment

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/hospital-margins-could-sink-to-a-negative-7-this-year-5-things-to-know.html?utm_medium=email

New Kaufman Hall Report: Hospital Finances Crashed in April ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has created financial challenges for hospitals and health systems, and, without additional federal aid, half of US hospitals could be operating in the red in the second half of this year, according to an analysis released by the American Hospital Association on July 21.

Five takeaways from the analysis: 

1. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the median hospital margin was 3.5 percent. COVID-19 is expected to drive the median hospital margin from positive to negative. 

2. Without funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, hospital margins would have been a negative 15 percent in the second quarter of 2020. Margins are still expected to drop to a negative 3 percent in the second quarter.

3. Without additional aid from the federal government, hospital margins could sink to a negative 7 percent in the second half of this year. 

4. In the second quarter of this year, nearly half of U.S. hospitals had negative margins. Those hospitals will remain with negative margins without further financial support.  

5. “Heading into the COVID-19 crisis, the financial health of many hospitals and health systems were challenged, with many operating in the red,” said hospital association President and CEO Rick Pollack in a news release. “As today’s analysis shows, this pandemic is the greatest financial threat in history for hospitals and health systems and is a serious obstacle to keeping the doors open for many.” 

The full report, prepared by Kaufman, Hall & Associates and released by the AHA, is available here. 

 

 

 

 

Medicaid expansion key indicator for rural hospitals’ financial viability

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, ACA, Credit, Credit Quality, Credit Ratings, Creditors, Critical Access Hospitals, Financial Viability, Financially Distressed, Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Bailout Funding, Hospital Bankruptcy, Hospital Closure, Medicaid, Medicaid Expansion, Pricing, Rural Health, Rural Hospital, Standby Capacity • Leave a comment

https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/medicaid-expansion-rural-hospitals-health-affairs/579005/

Hospital Closures, Underfunded Health Centers In Ohio Valley ...

Dive Brief:

  • Struggling rural hospitals are faring better financially in states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, according to a new Health Affairs study examining 1,004 rural hospitals’ CMS cost reports submitted from 2011 to 2017.
  • Among rural, nonprofit critical access hospitals in states that expanded Medicaid, the median overall margin increased from 1.8% to 3.7%, while it dropped from 3.5% to 2.8% in states that did not expand the program.
  • Tax-exempt status played another key role in determining rural hospitals’ financial viability. During the study period, the median overall profit margin at nonprofit critical access hospitals rose from 2.5% to 3.2%, while it dropped among for-profit operators from 3.2% to 0.4%.

Dive Insight:

The unprecedented financial distress mega health systems are under amid the ongoing pandemic is all too familiar to rural hospitals.

These systems are often smaller, employing fewer specialists and less medical technology, thus limiting the variety of services they can provide and profit on. They remain the closest point of care for millions of Americans, yet face rising closures.

The good news is that most rural hospitals are nonprofit, the designation that fared best in Health Affairs’ six-year study. More than 80% of the 1,004 private, rural hospitals analyzed in the study were nonprofit, while 17% were for-profit.

But researchers found Medicaid expansion played a key role in rural hospitals’ financial viability during the study period, with closures occurring more often in the South than in other regions.

Thirty-seven states have expanded Medicaid under the ACA, but 14 have not, and a majority of them are concentrated in the southern U.S., according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

One of those states is Oklahoma, which on Monday withdrew its planned July 1 Medicaid expansion, citing a lack of funding.

Another factor researchers found positively associated with overall margins and financial viability was charge markups, or the charged amount for a service relative to the Medicare allowable cost. Hospitals with low-charge markups had median overall margins of 1.8%, while those with high-charge markups had margins at 3.5%.

The same is true for occupancy rates. In 2017, rural hospitals with low occupancy rates had median overall profit margins of 0.1% Those with high occupancy rates had margins of 4.7%.

That presents a unique challenge for rural hospitals. Reimbursements from public and private payers do not compensate for fixed costs associated with providing standby capacity, which is essential in rural communities, where few hospitals serve large geographic areas.

Since 1997, CMS has been granting rural hospitals — particularly those with 25 or fewer acute care inpatient beds and located more than 35 miles from another hospital — critical access status, reimbursing them at cost for treating Medicare patients.

In the Health Affairs study, critical access hospitals accounted for 21% of the rural hospital bed capacity, with the remaining 79% of bed capacity provided by noncritical access hospitals.