The Supreme Court appeared receptive to the claim that Medicare overstepped its authority when it cut the amount that it paid certain hospitals for drugs they dispensed in their outpatient departments. None of the justices voiced sympathy with the government’s argument that Congress had precluded judicial review of the question. And while oral argument mainly involved a technical discussion about statutory meaning, several of the conservative justices toyed with the possibility of abandoning Chevron deference — the principle that the courts will defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of the statute that it administers.
It is always treacherous to try to anticipate what the justices will decide from the questions they ask at oral argument. Still, it’s safe to say that the hospitals challenging Medicare’s rate change had a good day in court. If they prevail, 340B hospitals will recoup billions in withheld payments and will continue to have an enormous incentive to dispense expensive drugs in their outpatient centers, even when cheaper and equally effective alternatives exist.
That’s a bad policy outcome, whatever the Supreme Court thinks the law requires. If Medicare lacks the legal power to fix it, however, it will be up to Congress to narrow the gap between 340B drug costs and Medicare payments. We could be waiting a very long time for a solution.
Hospitals saw operating margins continue to erode in October, declining 12% from September under the weight of rising labor costs, according to a national median of more than 900 health systems calculated by Kaufman Hall. It was the second consecutive monthly drop and comes as facilities are preparing for the fast-spreading omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Although expenses remained highly elevated, patient days and average length of stay fell for the first time in months in October, likely reflecting lower hospitalization rates as the pressure of treating large numbers of COVID cases began to ease, Kaufman Hall said in its latest report.
At the same time, operating room minutes rose 6.8% from September, pointing to renewed patient interest in elective procedures.
Dive Insight:
Doctors and nurses have barely caught a breath from the most recent surge in inpatient volumes driven by the delta variant. Now, hospitals face the possibility of a fresh wave of cases led by omicron.
“Performance could continue to suffer in the coming months as hospitals face sustained labor increases and the uncertainties of the emerging omicron variant,” according to the Kaufman Hall report.
The new variant has not been detected in the U.S. as of Wednesday morning, but Canada is amongthe 20 countries that have confirmed cases.
Scientists are scrambling to understand the characteristics of the omicron variant. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a White House press briefing Tuesday that omicron’s mutation profile points to “increased transmissibility and immune evasion.” But it is too soon to tell whether omicron will cause more severe disease than other COVID-19 variants, or how well current vaccines and treatments work against it, Fauci said.
Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel told the Financial Times he thought existing vaccines would be less effective against omicron than earlier variants. Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and other manufacturers are already working to adapt their vaccines to combat the new threat, first reported by South African scientists on Nov. 24.
Regeneron also said its COVID-19 antibody drug, the top-selling treatment in the U.S., might be less effective against omicron. The company said it is now conducting tests to determine how the variant affects its drug.
The median hospital operating margin, not including federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act funding, was down 31.5% in October, compared to pre-pandemic levels in the same month of 2019, according to Kaufman Hall’s snapshot. Hospitals in the West, South and Midwest that were hardest hit by the delta variant saw year-over-year margin declines.
Total labor expenses rose nearly 3% from September to October, 12.6% compared to October 2020 and 14.8% compared to October 2019, Kaufman Hall said. Full-time equivalents per adjusted occupied bed decreased 4.5% versus 2020 and 4% versus 2019, suggesting higher salaries due to nationwide labor shortages, rather than increased staffing levels, are driving up labor expenses.
Total non-labor expenses, however, decreased 1% in October from September for supplies, drugs and purchased services, following months of increases.
“Broader economic trends such as U.S. labor shortages are adding to the extreme pressures of the pandemic. Hospitals face greater uncertainties in the coming months as a result, as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations appear to once again be on the upswing before many have even had a chance to recover from the last surge,” Erik Swanson, a senior vice president of data and analytics at Kaufman Hall said.
How much should we pay for drugs? That’s the question at the center of American Hospital Association v. Becerra, a sleeper of a case involving billions of dollars in federal spending and a chance to reshape two doctrines at the heart of administrative law.
Drugs, money, and the law: Sounds sexy, right? Still, you could be forgiven for never having heard of the case, which will be argued on Tuesday. It arises out of a technical dispute over how Medicare, the federal program that insures 63 million elderly and disabled people, pays for some of the drugs that hospitals dispense to patients in outpatient departments — in particular, chemotherapy drugs and other expensive anti-cancer medications.
The case centers on part of a 2003 law that gives Medicare two options for how to pay for those drugs. Under the first option, Medicare would survey hospitals about what it cost them to acquire the drugs. Medicare would then draw on the survey data and reimburse hospitals for their “average acquisition costs,” subject to variations for different types of hospitals. It’s a rough-cut way to make hospitals whole without requiring them to submit receipts for every drug purchase.
But Medicare immediately encountered a problem: It just wasn’t practical to survey hospitals about their acquisition costs. Fortunately, the law anticipated that possibility and gave Medicare a second option. In the absence of survey data, Medicare could pay the “average price” for the drug, “as calculated and adjusted by the Secretary [of Health and Human Services] as necessary for purposes of this [option].”
This approach turned out to be costly. A drug’s “average price” is fixed elsewhere in the Medicare statute, typically at 106% of the drug’s sale price. As a policy matter, this “average sales price plus 6%” approach is hard to defend. Because 6% of a large number is bigger than 6% of a small number, hospitals have an incentive to dispense more expensive drugs, even when there are cheaper and equally effective therapies.
Other developments soon made the payment policy look even more dubious. Back in 1992, Congress created something called the 340B program to support health-care providers that serve poor and disadvantaged communities. Eligible providers get steep discounts on the drugs that they purchase — anywhere between 20% and 50% of the normal price.
Initially, few hospitals qualified for the 340B program. Today, more than two-thirds of nonprofit hospitals participate. (For-profits are excluded from the program.) For years, Medicare kept paying those 340B hospitals 106% of the average sales price of their outpatient drugs. The upshot was that hospitals were buying highly discounted drugs and then charging the federal government full price. That heightened the incentive to prescribe very expensive medications — which is partly why Medicare spending on outpatient drugs has ballooned, growing an average of 8.1% per year from 2006 through 2017.
Federal regulators were troubled by the gap between hospital costs and Medicare payments. In their view, the point of the 2003 statute was to cover hospitals’ costs, not to subsidize 340B hospitals. That jibes with the Medicare statute more generally: Its “overriding purpose” is to provide “reasonable (not excessive or unwarranted) cost-based reimbursement.”
So Medicare adopted a rule that, starting in 2018, slashed the reimbursement rate for 340B hospitals’ outpatient drugs (or, more precisely, a subset of them) to 22.5% less than the average sales price. That was still generous, since on average the 340B discount is about one-third of a drug’s price. But it was much less generous than before, and Medicare estimated that the change would save taxpayers $1.6 billion every year.
The American Hospital Association, together with two hospital trade groups and three hospitals, filed suit. Had Medicare chosen option one, the plaintiffs argued, it could have focused on acquisition costs and even distinguished among hospital groups in setting payment rates. Instead, it chose option two, which says that Medicare must pay a drug’s “average price” — not its acquisition price — and doesn’t provide for discriminating between hospitals. While the plaintiffs acknowledged that Medicare could “adjust” the average price, they argued that a cut from 106% to 77.5% of the average sales price was not really an adjustment. It was a wholesale revision of the statutory scheme.
The plaintiffs encountered an obstacle right out of the gate. To prevent courts from second-guessing Medicare’s choices about how much to pay for outpatient care, the Medicare statute says that “[t]here shall be no administrative or judicial review” of those choices. In the government’s telling, Congress precluded review because Medicare has a fixed annual budget for outpatient care. Increasing payments for one type of care thus requires cutting payments for other types of care.
That linkage means that, if the plaintiffs win, it’s not just that they should have been paid more for certain drugs. It’s that all hospitals should have been paid less for other services. (That helps explains why coalitions representing rural and for-profit hospitals have filed amicus briefs in support of Medicare.) Unwinding that decision would be an administrative nightmare — which is why Congress precluded review in the first place.
As the plaintiffs see it, however, the government simply misreads the scope of the preclusion language. Though it generally precludes review of reimbursement decisions relating to outpatient care, it doesn’t cross-reference the subsection relating to outpatient drugs. Both the district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed, invoking the strong presumption favoring judicial review of agency action.
On the merits, the plaintiffs fared less well. Though they won in the district court, the D.C. Circuit held that Medicare reasonably read the 2003 law to allow it to align hospital reimbursement with hospital acquisition costs. Medicare’s interpretation — and the scope of its authority to “adjust” payment rates — was thus owed deference under Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a 1984 decision holding that courts generally should defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes. Judge Cornelia Pillard dissented, arguing that the statute unambiguously foreclosed Medicare’s interpretation.
The plaintiffs asked the Supreme Court to review a single question: whether Medicare should receive Chevron deference for interpreting the 2003 law in the manner that it did. Tantalizingly, the plaintiffs noted that “[i]t is no secret that members of this Court have raised concerns about whether Chevron deference, particularly when applied as indiscriminately as it was in this case, violates the separation of powers.”
The Supreme Court bit. In its order granting certiorari, however, the court instructed the parties to brief an additional question: whether the Medicare statute precludes the lawsuit. What that means is that — in addition to resolving whether hospitals are entitled to billions of taxpayer dollars — the court will have the chance to address two foundational doctrines of administrative law: the presumption of reviewability and Chevron deference.
Arguably, AHA v. Becerraoffers an unusually vivid example of the costs of a strong presumption of reviewability. If the plaintiffs win, what’s the remedy? Is Medicare supposed to reopen every outpatient payment decision that it’s made since 2018, given that paying more for 340B drugs means it should have paid less for other services? The plaintiffs say no, arguing that Medicare wouldn’t be required to make any retroactive adjustments. But the government fears otherwise and the answer is not at all clear. Isn’t that the kind of mess that preclusion is meant to avoid?
I’ve called in my academic work for abandoning the presumption of reviewability precisely because it disrespects Congress’ reasonable desire to shield some administrative decisions from judicial review. In recent years, however, the Supreme Court has evinced no interest in doing so — the presumption of reviewability remains “strong.” We may soon find out just how strong it is.
But the big question about the case is whether the court will use it as a vehicle to reconsider Chevron deference. In the plaintiffs’ view, it is galling — “an affront to the separation of powers” — that the courts would defer when Medicare has exploited a purported ambiguity to sidestep Congress’ clear instructions about how much to pay hospitals. Several of the conservative justices, including in particular Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, may be receptive to the argument. If so, the right wing of the court could use the case to narrow or even overturn Chevron, with potentially dramatic implications for the scope of executive-branch power.
Whether the court will do so is anyone’s guess. The justices could easily resolve the case on narrower grounds. Maybe the statute unambiguously forecloses Medicare’s interpretation of the law, as the plaintiffs argue. Or maybe, as the government claims, Medicare properly exercised its explicit authority to “adjust” prices for outpatient drugs.
Neither of those holdings would be the sexiest decision that the Supreme Court has ever issued. It would be technical, arcane — even boring. Given the financial stakes, however, it would be significant nonetheless.
The healthcare industry’s staffing shortage crisis has had clear consequences for care delivery and efficiency, forcing some health systems to pause nonemergency surgeries or temporarily close facilities. Less understood is how these shortages are affecting care quality and patient safety.
A mix of high COVID-19 patient volume and staff departures amid the pandemic has put hospitals at the heart of a national staffing shortage, but there is little national data available to quantify the shortages’ effects on patient care.
The first hint came last month from a CDC report that found healthcare-associated infections increased significantly in 2020 after years of steady decline. Researchers attributed the increase to challenges related to the pandemic, including staffing shortages and high patient volumes, which limited hospitals’ ability to follow standard infection control practices.
“That’s probably one of the first real pieces of data — from a large scale dataset — that we’ve seen that gives us some sense of direction of where we’ve been headed with the impact of patient outcomes as a result of the pandemic,” Patricia McGaffigan, RN, vice president of safety programs for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, told Becker’s. “I think we’re still trying to absorb much of what’s really happening with the impact on patients and families.”
An opaque view into national safety trends
Because of lags in data reporting and analysis, the healthcare industry lacks clear insights into the pandemic’s effect on national safety trends.
National data on safety and quality — such as surveys of patient safety culture from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality — can often lag by several quarters to a year, according to Ms. McGaffigan.
“There [have been] some declines in some of those scores more recently, but it does take a little while to be able to capture those changes and be able to put those changes in perspective,” she said. “One number higher or lower doesn’t necessarily indicate a trend, but it is worth really evaluating really closely.”
For example, 569 sentinel events were reported to the Joint Commission in the first six months of 2021, compared to 437 for the first six months of 2020. However, meaningful conclusions about the events’ frequency and long-term trends cannot be drawn from the dataset, as fewer than 2 percent of all sentinel events are reported to the Joint Commission, the organization estimates.
“We may never have as much data as we want,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of the Leapfrog Group. She said a main area of concern is CMS withholding certain data amid the pandemic. Previously, the agency has suppressed data for individual hospitals during local crises, but never on such a wide scale, according to Ms. Binder.
CMS collects and publishes quality data for more than 4,000 hospitals nationwide. The data is refreshed quarterly, with the next update scheduled for October. This update will include additional data for the fourth quarter of 2020.
“It is important to note that CMS provided a blanket extraordinary circumstances exception for Q1 and Q2 2020 data due to the COVID-19 pandemic where data was not required nor reported,” a CMS spokesperson told Becker’s. “In addition, some current hospital data will not be publicly available until about July 2022, while other data will not be available until January 2023 due to data exceptions, different measure reporting periods and the way in which CMS posts data.”
Hospitals that closely monitor their own datasets in more near-term windows may have a better grasp of patient safety trends at a local level. However, their ability to monitor, analyze and interpret that data largely depends on the resources available, Ms. McGaffigan said. The pandemic may have sidelined some of that work for hospitals, as clinical or safety leaders had to shift their priorities and day-to-day activities.
“There are many other things besides COVID-19 that can harm patients,” Ms. Binder told Becker’s. “Health systems know this well, but given the pandemic, have taken their attention off these issues. Infection control and quality issues are not attended to at the level of seriousness we need them to be.”
What health systems should keep an eye on
While the industry is still waiting for definitive answers on how staffing shortages have affected patient safety, Ms. Binder and Ms. McGaffigan highlighted a few areas of concern they are watching closely.
The first is the effect limited visitation policies have had on families — and more than just the emotional toll. Family members and caregivers are a critical player missing in healthcare safety, according to Ms. Binder.
When hospitals don’t allow visitors, loved ones aren’t able to contribute to care, such as ensuring proper medication administration or communication. Many nurses have said they previously relied a lot on family support and vigilance. The lack of extra monitoring may contribute to the increasing stress healthcare providers are facing and open the door for more medical errors.
Which leads Ms. Binder to her second concern — a culture that doesn’t always respect and prioritize nurses. The pandemic has underscored how vital nurses are, as they are present at every step of the care journey, she continued.
To promote optimal care, hospitals “need a vibrant, engaged and safe nurse workforce,” Ms. Binder said. “We don’t have that. We don’t have a culture that respects nurses.”
Diagnostic accuracy is another important area to watch, Ms. McGaffigan said. Diagnostic errors — such as missed or delayed diagnoses, or diagnoses that are not effectively communicated to the patient — were already one of the most sizable care quality challenges hospitals were facing prior to the pandemic.
“It’s a little bit hard to play out what that crystal ball is going to show, but it is in particular an area that I think would be very, very important to watch,” she said.
Another area to monitor closely is delayed care and its potential consequences for patient outcomes, according to Ms. McGaffigan. Many Americans haven’t kept up with preventive care or have had delays in accessing care. Such delays could not only worsen patients’ health conditions, but also disengage them and prevent them from seeking care when it is available.
Reinvigorating safety work: Where to start
Ms. McGaffigan suggests healthcare organizations looking to reinvigorate their safety work go back to the basics. Leaders should ensure they have a clear understanding of what their organization’s baseline safety metrics are and how their safety reports have been trending over the past year and a half.
“Look at the foundational aspects of what makes care safe and high-quality,” she said. “Those are very much linked to a lot of the systems, behaviors and practices that need to be prioritized by leaders and effectively translated within and across organizations and care teams.”
She recommended healthcare organizations take a total systems approach to their safety work, by focusing on the following four, interconnected pillars:
Culture, leadership and governance
Patient and family engagement
Learning systems
Workforce safety
For example, evidence shows workforce safety is an integral part of patient safety, but it’s not an area that’s systematically measured or evaluated, according to Ms. McGaffigan. Leaders should be aware of this connection and consider whether their patient safety reporting systems address workforce safety concerns or, instead, add on extra work and stress for their staff.
Safety performance can slip when team members get busy or burdensome work is added to their plates, according to Ms. McGaffigan. She said leaders should be able to identify and prioritize the essential value-added work that must go on at an organization to ensure patients and families will have safe passage through the healthcare system and that care teams are able to operate in the safest and healthiest work environments.
In short, leaders should ask themselves: “What is the burdensome work people are being asked to absorb and what are the essential elements that are associated with safety that you want and need people to be able to stay on top of,” she said.
To improve both staffing shortages and quality of care, health systems must bring nurses higher up in leadership and into C-suite roles, Ms. Binder said. Giving nurses more authority in hospital decisions will make everything safer. Seattle-based Virginia Mason Hospital recently redesigned its operations around nurse priorities and subsequently saw its quality and safety scores go up, according to Ms. Binder.
“If it’s a good place for a nurse to go, it’s a good place for a patient to go,” Ms. Binder said, noting that the national nursing shortage isn’t just a numbers game; it requires a large culture shift.
Hospitals need to double down on quality improvement efforts, Ms. Binder said. “Many have done the opposite, for good reason, because they are so focused on COVID-19. Because of that, quality improvement efforts have been reduced.”
Ms. Binder urged hospitals not to cut quality improvement staff, noting that this is an extraordinarily dangerous time for patients, and hospitals need all the help they can get monitoring safety. Hospitals shouldn’t start to believe the notion that somehow withdrawing focus on quality will save money or effort.
“It’s important that the American public knows that we are fighting for healthcare quality and safety — and we have to fight for it, we all do,” Ms. Binder concluded. “We all have to be vigilant.”
Conclusion
The true consequences of healthcare’s labor shortage on patient safety and care quality will become clear once more national data is available. If the CDC’s report on rising HAI rates is any harbinger of what’s to come, it’s clear that health systems must place renewed focus and energy on safety work — even during something as unprecedented as a pandemic.
The irony isn’t lost on Ms. Binder: Amid a crisis driven by infectious disease, U.S. hospitals are seeing higher rates of other infections.
“A patient dies once,” she concluded. “They can die from COVID-19 or C. diff. It isn’t enough to prevent one.”
Amid a nationwide staffing shortage, rising demand for nurses has led hospitals to increase salaries and other benefits to attract and retain workers, Melanie Evans reports for the Wall Street Journal.
Hospitals increase salaries, benefits to keep up with nursing demand
Hospitals across the country have been struggling amid staffing shortages, particularly of nurses, Evans reports. According to health care consultancy Premier, nurse turnover rates have increased to around 22% this year, up from the annual rate of about 18% in 2019.
“We are employing more nurses now than we ever have, and we also have more vacancies than we ever had,” said Greg Till, chief people officer at Providence Health & Services.
To retain their current nurses and attract new staff, many hospitals have increased their nurses’ salaries to remain competitive in the job market, Evans reports.
For example, HCA Healthcare, one of the largest hospital chains in the country, said it increased nurse pay this year to keep up with Covid-19 surges and compete with rivals also trying to fill vacant positions.
Similarly, Jefferson Health in May raised salaries for its nearly 10,000 nurses by 10% after the system discovered that rivals had increased their compensation. “The circumstances required it,” said Kate Fitzpatrick, Jefferson’s chief nurse executive.
In addition, Citizens Memorial Hospital in Bolivar, Mo., this month raised its nurses’ salaries by up to 5% after rivals in other nearby cities increased their workers’ wages. Sarah Hanak, Citizen Memorial’s CNO, said the hospital also increased the hourly wages of nurses working overnight shifts by around 15% to ensure sufficient staffing for those shifts.
“We were forced to,” Hanak said. “We absolutely have to stay competitive.”
Overall, the average annual salary for RNs, not including bonus pay, grew to $81,376, according to Premier—a 4% increase across the first nine months of the year. This is larger than the 3.3% increase in the average annual nurse salary for 2020 and the 2.6% increase in 2019, Evanswrites.
In addition to salary increases, some organizations, such as Providence, are also offering other benefits to attract and retain nurses, such as more time off, greater schedule flexibility, and new career development opportunities. Many hospitals are also hiring new graduates to work in specialized roles in ORs and other areas, allowing them to advance their careers more quickly than they would have before.
Overall, this rising demand for nurses has allowed those entering the workforce to negotiate higher salaries, more flexible working hours, and other benefits, Evans writes.
“I think you get to write your ticket,” said Tessa Johnson, president of the North Dakota Nurses Association.
Nurse compensation increases were inevitable—here’s why
It was inevitable that we would get to this point: baseline nurse compensation on a clear upward trajectory. Inevitable because this boils down to laws of supply and demand. Amid a clear nursing shortage, organizations are being forced to raise baseline compensation to compete for increasingly scarce qualified nurses. This is true in nearly every market, even for those considered to be ‘destination employers.’
If anything, what’s most surprising in the data from Premier is the moderated increase of around 4%. From a worker’s perspective, that’s not even covering cost of living increases due to inflation. However, amid this new data, it’s important to keep two things in mind:
Two considerations for health care leaders
New data only captures baseline compensation.Differentials—which organizations must standardize and expand across shifts, specialties, and even settings—plus overtime put baseline compensation much higher. Not to mention lucrative sign-on bonuses, that members tell us are increasingly table stakes in their markets. In general, we don’t recommend this type of incentive that does nothing for retention. You’re better off investing those resources in baseline compensation as well as beefing up your RN bonus plan to incentivize retention.
There is a new floor for wages (and it’s only going up from here).
Open questions (and important indicators) we are assessing
What happens to wages for entry-level clinical roles? As the shortage of RNs persists, organizations will need to make a shift to team-based models of care, and those are only possible with a stable workforce of entry-level personnel. Right now, that part of the health care workforce is anything but stable. When you consider their work and their wages in comparison to out-of-industry players that pay the same or better, that’s a clear area where investment is required.
Will the share of nurses working permanently with travel agencies return to pre-pandemic levels? That’s to say, what will those RNs who experienced the traveler lifestyle and pay value more moving forward: the flexibility and premium pay or stability of permanent employment? Even if this number stabilizes a couple percentage points above pre-pandemic levels, that will aggravate provider’s sense of shortage.
The American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association teamed up to release a new “Forever Grateful” TV and digital ad campaign on Monday to thank health care workers.
Why it matters: The campaign comes in the face of record levels of reported health care worker burnout tied, in part, to the prolonged emergency response to COVID-19.
The AHA also released a new video thanking health care professionals working in America’s hospitals and health systems for their work.
We recently caught up with a health system chief clinical officer, who brought up some recent news about CVS. “I was really disappointed to hear that they’re going to start employing doctors,” he shared, referring to the company’s announcement earlier this month that it would begin to hire physicians to staff primary care practices in some stores. He said that as his system considered partnerships with payers and retailers, CVS stood out as less threatening compared to UnitedHealth Group and Humana, who both directly employ thousands of doctors: “Since they didn’t employ doctors, we saw CVS HealthHUBs as complementary access points, rather than directly competing for our patients.”
As CVS has integrated with Aetna, the company is aiming to expand its use of retail care sites to manage cost of care for beneficiaries. CEO Karen Lynch recently described plans to build a more expansive “super-clinic” platform targeted toward seniors, that will offer expanded diagnostics, chronic disease management, mental health and wellness, and a smaller retail footprint. The company hopes that these community-based care sites will boost Aetna’s Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollment, and it sees primary care physicians as central to that strategy.
It’s not surprising that CVS has decided to get into the physician business, as its primary retail pharmacy competitors have already moved in that direction. Last month, Walgreens announced a $5.2B investment to take a majority stake in VillageMD, with an eye to opening of 1,000 “Village Medical at Walgreens” primary care practices over the next five years. And while Walmart’s rollout of its Walmart Health clinics has been slower than initially announced, its expanded clinics, led by primary care doctors and featuring an expanded service profile including mental health, vision and dental care, have been well received by consumers. In many ways employing doctors makes more sense for CVS, given that the company has looked to expand into more complex care management, including home dialysis, drug infusion and post-operative care. And unlike Walmart or Walgreens, CVS already bears risk for nearly 3M Aetna MA members—and can immediately capture the cost savings from care management and directing patients to lower-cost servicesin its stores.
But does this latest move make CVS a greater competitive threat to health systems and physician groups? In the war for talent, yes. Retailer and insurer expansion into primary care will surely amp up competition for primary care physicians, as it already has for nurse practitioners. Having its own primary care doctors may make CVS more effective in managing care costs, but the company’s ultimate strategy remains unchanged: use its retail primary care sites to keep MA beneficiaries out of the hospital and other high-cost care settings.
Partnerships with CVS and other retailers and insurers present an opportunity for health systems to increase access points and expand their risk portfolios. But it’s likely that these types of partnerships are time-limited. In a consumer-driven healthcare market, answering the question of “Whose patient is it?” will be increasingly difficult, as both parties look to build long-term loyalty with consumers.
Some 30% of U.S. healthcare workers employed at hospitals remained unvaccinated as of Sept. 15, according to an analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data published Thursday by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.
The findings include data from 3.3 million healthcare workers at more than 2,000 hospitals, collected between Jan. 20 and Sept. 15.
Healthcare personnel working in children’s hospitals had the highest vaccination rates, along with those working in metropolitan counties.
Dive Insight:
The vaccination rate for healthcare workers is roughly in line with that of the general population, though the risk of exposure and transmission can be higher in settings where infected COVID-19 patients are treated, Hannah Reses, CDC epidemiologist and lead author of the analysis, said.
When the shots were initially rolled out, vaccination rates climbed among healthcare workers, rising from 36% to 60% between January and April of 2021, the analysis found. But a major slowdown occurred shortly after.
From April to August, vaccination rates rose just 5%. They then rose 5% again in just one month — from August to September — likely due to the delta variant and more systems implementing their own mandates, the report said.
Researchers also found discrepancies in vaccination rates based on the type of hospitals and their geographic locations.
By September, workers at children’s hospitals had the highest vaccination rates (77%), followed by those at short-term acute care hospitals (70%), long-term care facilities (68.8%), and critical access hospitals (64%).
Among healthcare workers at facilities in metropolitan areas, about 71% were vaccinated by September, compared to 65% of workers at rural facilities.
The findings come as health systems work to comply with new vaccination mandates from the Biden administration.
Healthcare facilities must follow the CMS rule, which stipulates employees must be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4 or risk losing Medicare and Medicaid funding. Unlike the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s rule that applies to businesses with 100 employees or more but excludes healthcare providers, the CMS rule does not allow for a testing exception.
Both agencies’ rules were met with pushback. The attorneys general of 10 mostly rural states — Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota and New Hampshire — filed a lawsuit on Oct. 10 against CMS for its rule and said the mandates would exacerbate existing staffing shortages.
“Requiring healthcare workers to get a vaccination or face termination is unconstitutional and unlawful, and could exacerbate healthcare staffing shortages to the point of collapse, especially in Missouri’s rural areas,” the state’s attorney general, Eric Schmitt, said in a statement.
But some regional systems that implemented their own mandates have seen positive results.
After UNC Health and Novant Health in North Carolina required the shots, staff vaccination rates rose to 97% and 99%, respectively, according to a White House report.
Among Novant Health’s 35,000 employees, about 375 were suspended for not complying, and about 200 of those suspended employees did end up getting vaccinated so they could return to work, according to the report.
And some major hospital chains across the country are joining suit with the looming deadline, including HCA with its 183 hospitals and more than 275,000 employees.
The chain is requiring employees be fully vaccinated by the CMS deadline on Jan. 4, a spokesperson said in an email statement.
At the same time, this year’s flu season is difficult to predict, though, “the number of influenza virus detection reported by public health labs has increased in recent weeks,” Reses said.
“The CDC is preparing for flu and COVID to circulate along with other respiratory viruses, and so flu vaccination therefore will be really important to reduce the risk of flu and potentially serious complications, particularly in combination with COVID-19 circulating,” Reses said.
From excessive waste to greenhouse gas emissions, healthcare organizations play a key role in contributing to climate change.
Research suggests the United States is the highest contributor to the global healthcare climate footprint. The healthcare industry accounts for 8.5 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.. Worldwide, the healthcare industry is responsible for 4.4 percent of net emissions, which is the equivalent of 514 coal-fired power plants, according to a 2019 report from Arup and Health Care Without Harm, a group dedicated to achieving more sustainable healthcare practices.
The medical supply chain accounts for 71 percent of healthcare’s carbon footprint. Excess waste is created from plastic gloves, surgical supplies, medicine containers and gowns, among other materials. If the American healthcare sector were its own country, it would be the 13th largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, according to a column by Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins physicians.
A 2010 study estimated that each occupied U.S. hospital bed created 33.8 pounds of waste per day. Hospitals also dispose of 2 million pounds of supplies that have never been used, which costs them $15 million each year.
Other key contributors to healthcare’s carbon footprint are emissions from facilities, which account for 17 percent of its footprint, and indirect emissions from electricity, heating and cooling, which account for 12 percent, according to the Arup and Health Care Without Harm report.
A study by the National Health Service in England found that 2 to 3 percent of its carbon footprint is created by inhaled anesthetic gases. The drugs are vented through hospital rooftops and can be destructive to the ozone layer. Despite the potential consequences of releasing the gases into the atmosphere, the U.S. has no regulations on how to dispose them.
Earlier this year, President Joe Biden proposed a framework called Build Back Better that would, among other things, expand Medicaid. If the BBB plan is implemented, a new Urban Institute analysis predicts that federal health subsidies would outweigh a projected increase in hospital spending by about 3-to-1.
The current draft of the Build Back Better Act (BBBA) includes provisions that would extend enhanced ACA subsidies to people below 100% of the federal poverty limit in the 12 states that have not expanded Medicaid. These provisions are intended to extend health insurance coverage to millions of people and to lower the cost of healthcare for many families.
Hospitals in non-expansion states would see more than $6.8 billion in new spending as a result of the BBBA’s closing of the Medicaid gap, which is about 15 times larger than the expected disproportionate share hospital allotment cuts of $444 million, the findings showed.
Overall, new federal health subsidies disbursed to non-expansion states for people in the coverage gap would be $19.6 billion. Florida, Texas, Georgia and North Carolina hospitals are among those that would have the most substantial increases in spending because of added coverage, the analysis found.
The Urban Institute also determined that the benefits of the changes would not necessarily go to the same hospitals that would sustain reductions in DSH allotments. If true, that means some hospitals may be worse off with the proposed changes.
Still, though only a portion of the total increased federal spending under the BBBA provisions would flow to hospitals, the researcher concludes that in the years during which additional subsidies would be provided, hospitals would be substantially better off overall than they are under current law, even after proposed Medicaid DSH cuts are taken into account.
WHAT’S THE IMPACT?
The effects of the new federal health subsidies would vary across states, largely because of differences in state populations, the Urban Institute showed.
Florida hospitals, for instance, are projected to gain $1.7 billion in new spending because of added coverage, and to lose $33 million in DSH allotments, resulting in a net gain of $1.6 billion. Texas hospitals could gain $1.6 billion in new spending and lose $157 million in DSH allotments, gaining almost $1.5 billion. Georgia and North Carolina hospitals would also have substantial increases in spending because of added coverage that would exceed their reduced Medicaid DSH allotments by more than $750 million and almost $900 million, respectively.
Meanwhile, because Wisconsin already covers adults up to the FPL under Medicaid, it would have a small net loss in payments to hospitals for the Medicaid gap population, but a net gain overall.
Hospitals serving a disproportionately high share of undocumented people would see less benefit from reform than other hospitals, and could see substantial DSH cuts. At the same time, the overall decline in the number of uninsured people could save spending on uncompensated care for the uninsured, data showed. If states and localities save on uncompensated care, the savings could be distributed to hospitals most in need after DSH cuts.
THE LARGER TREND
The BBBA’s increased subsidies are set to end after 2025, whereas the bill’s Medicaid DSH cuts would be permanent. More broadly, nationwide Medicaid DSH cuts specified under the Affordable Care Act have been repeatedly delayed, but they are now due to be implemented in fiscal year 2024. At $8 billion in that year, those cuts are much larger than the DSH cuts specified in the BBBA.
Unless Congress intervenes, UI said, these ACA-related DSH reductions would be in addition to the DSH cuts in the BBBA for the 12 non-expansion states.
The BBBA was slated to go to a vote the week of November 15, but that timetable may shift. According to CNN, the Congressional Budget office has yet to give a final cost estimate score for the bill; a group of moderate Democrats is waiting to see the CBO score before deciding whether to vote for the bill.
HENRY KOTULA 