A recent STAT News article highlights a concerning new trend in direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical marketing, enabled by access to virtual care. Pitched as a tool for patient empowerment, pharmaceutical companies are now offering consumers immediate treatment for a variety of health conditions at the click of a button that says, “Talk to a doctor now.”
Over 90 percent of eligible patients receive a prescription for the drug they “clicked” on, after connecting with a virtual care provider on a third-party telehealth platform. Not only does this practice give drug companies direct access to prospective patients, but it also delivers lucrative data on patient age, zip code, and medication history that can be used to target marketing efforts.
The Gist: Articles like this remind us why the US is one of only two countries in the world that allows direct-to-consumer marketing of prescription drugs (the other, interestingly, is New Zealand).
As the number of Americans with a primary care provider continues to decline, this kind of Amazon-style, easy-button drug shopping experience will be increasingly appealing to many consumers. But wherever innovation outpaces regulation, situations in which for-profit companies prioritize profits over providing the best care for patients are sure to occur.
While we support the idea of greater consumer empowerment in healthcare, we worry that this highly fragmented approach to consumer-driven health can result in abuse and patient harm.
On Monday, a federal judge denied the Department of Justice (DOJ)’s attempt to block UHG’s $13B purchase of Change Healthcare, a technology firm specializing in claims processing and data analytics.
The DOJ sought to block the purchase on antitrust grounds, arguing that UHG would have access to technologies that its rivals use to compete, but the judge, writing in a sealed ruling, found the DOJ’s case inadequate. It is unclear at this point whether the DOJ will appeal.
Change will now join UHG’s OptumInsight division, though in response to anticompetitive concerns, the ruling ordered UHG to sell part of Change’s claims payment and editing business, as it had already planned to do.
The Gist: Antitrust regulators have had much greater success at challenging horizontal healthcare mergers but have struggled to find solid footing to fight vertical deals.
The UHG-Change case was closely watched in part because of the precedent it would have set in terms of holding “platform” aggregators in check. As UHG and other healthcare titans continue to acquire assets up and down the value chain (physician practices, ambulatory surgery centers, clinics, telehealth capabilities, risk products), it’s increasingly clear that the government will face an uphill climb to question the competitive effects of these vertical M&A activities.
A recent JAMA study of 578 US dermatology, gastroenterology, and ophthalmology practices acquired by PE firms from 2016 to 2020 found a steady rise in spending in the two years after acquisition, indicating that the average charge per commercial claim increased 20 percent, and the average allowed amount per claim rose 11 percent. It also found that, compared to a large control group with similar patient risk scores, PE-acquired practices saw new patient visits increase by 38 percent and total visit volume increase by 16 percent.
The Gist: While the study’s authors note that these findings could be explained by changes in practice operations or management, they point out they could also be caused by an overutilization of profitable services not tied to an increase in value or benefit to the patient.
We think the latter is likely the case here, and that this study provides evidence of PE-induced overutilization aimed at meeting aggressive growth targets.
But this is just the latest wave of ownership-induced overutilization: 20 years ago the same spotlight was on physician-owned imaging, cardiac, and other outpatient diagnostics, with several studies then documenting higher utilization in these facilities. Nonetheless, this latest trend is an important one to document and quantify, as the number of physicians working in PE-backed organizations continues to rise.
While Advocate Aurora Health’s year-to-date operating income sits at $51.2 million, $666 million in investment declines weigh heavy on its bruised bottom line.
Following a tight first quarter, Advocate Aurora Health managed to grow its operating margin but still landed negative due to $400 million in investment losses during the quarter ended June 30, according to financial filings.
The 27-hospital nonprofit—which pending regulatory review slated to merge with Atrium Health in one of the year’s biggest hospital transactions—reported a $48.7 million operating income during its second fiscal quarter of 2022 (1.7% margin).
This is up from the $2.5 million (0.3% margin) it scraped out earlier this year but well below the $213.7 million (6.5% margin) of Q2 2021.
Revenues for the quarter increased 1.5% year over year to more than $3.5 billion. While patient service revenue and other revenue both grew by tens of millions, capitation revenue declined slightly due to a shift in overall membership mix and a 6.1% dip in capitated lives, the system wrote in its filing.
Discharge volumes fell 7.7% year over year during the most recent quarter, as did home care visits by 7.6%. The system saw increases compared to the previous year among its observation cases (11.6%), hospital outpatient visits (2.1%) and physician visits (7.1%).
Advocate Aurora’s expenses grew at a faster rate, at 6.7% year over year during the second quarter. The increase was led by a 10.2% jump in salaries, wages and benefits payouts, which the system said was fueled by a blend of higher nurse agency costs, higher merit and premium pay for clinical care and volume-driven demand for more full-time equivalent employees.
The nonprofit saw last year’s investment gains largely upended, recording a $400 million net loss during the quarter compared to the $571.6 million gain of the prior year’s equivalent quarter.
The shortfall dragged Advocate Aurora’s net income to a $347.6 million loss for the quarter. It had logged a $545.6 million gain the previous year.
Looking at six-month numbers, the health system reported $7.1 billion in total revenue and $7 billion in total expenses for an operating income of $51.2 million. Year-to-date investment losses landed at $666 million, bringing the organization to a $600.8 million net loss.
Advocate Aurora was formed in 2018 from the merger of nonprofits Advocate Health Care and Aurora Health Care. It treats 2.6 million unique patients, employs 75,000 people and logged just under $14.1 billion in total revenue across 2021 and a net income of more than $1.8 billion.
Should its merger plans go through, Advocate Aurora and Atrium Health would control 67 hospitals and $27 billion of combined revenues across six states. The deal is anticipated to close before the end of the year, according to the earnings filing.
The system’s latest numbers will come as no surprise in light of similar quarterly reports from Advocate Aurora’s nonprofit contemporaries.
Investment struggles and increased expenses were reported across the board, although not every major system was able to keep operations in the black. Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente and UPMC were among those on the stronger side of the scale while Sutter Health, Mass General Brigham and Providence each reported tens to hundreds of millions in operational losses.
Fitch Ratingswarned last week that these sector-wide challenges are unlikely to vanish during the remainder of the year. As such, the agency has downgraded its outlook for the nonprofit hospital industry from “neutral” to “deteriorating.”
Nonprofit hospitals’ median financial metrics showed improvement last year, but Fitch Ratings is projecting declines for next year and beyond.
The credit rating agency analyzed 2021 audited data and reported that “AA” rated hospital medians showed a 20 percent increase in cash to adjusted debt. “BBB” rated health systems had an 8 percent increase.
“The deceptively strong numerical improvements over prior years’ medians are less a sign of sector resiliency and more a cautionary calm before the storm,” Fitch Ratings senior director Kevin Holloran said in the Aug. 18 report. “Additional expenses, primarily labor, have become part of the permanent fabric of hospital operations, that when combined with ongoing incremental challenges will exert tremendous pressure on providers through calendar 2022 and beyond.”
Fitch predicts hospital medians will flip this time next year due to inflationary pressures, a challenging operational start to 2022 and additional omicron sub-variants.
Fitch also highlighted staffing as a concern for hospital medians.
“We are likely two years before some level of ‘normal’ returns to the sector,” Mr. Holloran said in the report. “For many hospitals, their ‘value journey’ will be on temporary hold until expenses stabilize and become more predictable.”
While for-profit health system giants HCA Healthcare and Tenet Healthcare reported reductions in contract labor usage last quarter, sustained higher labor costs and sluggish demand resulted in both of them, along with Community Health Systems and Universal Health Services, seeing their net income decline in the second quarter.
Like many systems, the for-profit chains seem to have successfully weaned themselves from earlier reliance on expensive temporary nurses, but are facing more structural increases in labor costs as salaries have risen to remain competitive in a very tight labor market.
The Gist: The earnings reports from for-profit companies are a canary in the coal mine for the overall margin performance of the industry. Although investor-owned companies are vastly outnumbered by their not-for-profit peers, they often move more quickly, and with more vigor, to reduce costs in order to meet the earnings expectations of Wall Street investors. They also typically rely more heavily on volume growth—particularly emergency department visits—as a driver of earnings.
If for-profits are now finding it more difficult to pull those levers, we’d expect that the broader universe of nonprofit systems is experiencing even tougher sledding. That’s consistent with what we’re hearing anecdotally from health systems we work with.
After a few years of relatively unchanged monthly premiums, a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of 72 rate filings for 2023 finds a median 10 percent increase. Insurers say the biggest driver is rising medical costs, driven by higher rates for provider services and pharmaceuticals, as well as a return to pre-pandemic utilization levels. Insurers aren’t expecting COVID-19 or federal policy changes—including a potential extension of enhanced subsidies—to have much of an impact on rates.
The Gist:High inflation and the growing wage-price spiral have left providers with much higher costs, which is sure to drive up the overall cost of healthcare. Where provider systems have the leverage to demand higher rates from insurers, this will inevitably drive up premiums—an effect that is already starting to show up in the individual insurance market.
If Congressional Democrats are able to extend ACA subsidies, most ACA enrollees won’t actually feel these premium increases, but as contracts in the group market come up for renewal, we’d expect inflation in employer-sponsored premiums as well. Given the cost-sharing now built into most benefit plans, individual consumers will likely see healthcare join gas, food, and housing as household costs that are experiencing unsustainable inflationary increases.
Healthcare mergers reached a record-high $19.2 billion in total transacted revenue in the second quarter of this year, led by the planned tie-up of Advocate Aurora Health and Atrium Health and several other large deals, according to the latest quarterly M&A report from Kaufman Hall.
Still, the number of healthcare transactions announced during the second quarter remained below pre-pandemic levels at just 13 deals, one more than the record-low total seen in the first quarter of this year. Activity so far in 2022 underscores what could be a longer-term shift toward fewer but larger hospital deals, the industry consultants said.
Kaufman Hall also predicted continued interest in partnerships between health systems and skilled nursing facilities that can offer new services or more specialized care. Such facilities can support patients’ earlier discharge from inpatient care to a lower-cost setting and can help reduce hospital re-admissions, the report said.
Dive Insight:
Dealmaking in the first half of the year continues a sluggish pace established in 2021, when just 49 health system mergers were announced all year. Last year’s tally marked the lowest annual deal total in a decade, according to Kaufman Hall.
But deals are getting larger. The second quarter’s $19.2 billion in transacted revenue is more than double the total of $8.5 billion seen in the second quarter of 2021, when a similar number of transactions was announced.
Megamergers, in which the seller’s annual revenue tops $1 billion, remain an ongoing trend. Kaufman Hall tracked two such deals in the second quarter: the Advocate-Atrium transaction and Trinity Health’s planned acquisition of Iowa-based MercyOne.
The second quarter saw two additional transactions with smaller-party revenue above $500 million: Bellin Health System’s merger with Gundersen Health System and George Washington University Hospital’s combination with Universal Health Services.
All told, the average size of the smaller party in a deal reached a record $1.5 billion in the second quarter. This was more than double 2021’s record average size of $619 million, Kaufman Hall found.
A couple of recent transactions illustrate the trend toward partnerships with skilled nursing facilities, the report noted. Hackensack Meridian Health announced in late March that the majority of its long-term care facilities would be acquired by Complete Care, and in April, Virtua Health announced the sale of its two skilled nursing facilities to Tryko Partners. Kaufman Hall advised Virtua Health in the transaction.
Nonprofit hospitals are reporting thinner margins this year, stretched by rising labor, supply and capital costs, and will be pressed to make big changes to their business models or risk negative rating actions, Fitch Ratings said in a report out Tuesday.
Warning that it could take years for provider margins to recover to pre-pandemic levels, Fitch outlined a series of steps necessary to manage the inflationary pressures. Those moves include steeper rate increases in the short term and “relentless, ongoing cost-cutting and productivity improvements” over the medium term, the ratings agency said.
Further out on the horizon, “improvement in operating margins from reduced levels will require hospitals to make transformational changes to the business model,” Fitch cautioned.
Dive Insight:
It has been a rough year so far for U.S. hospitals, which are navigating labor shortages, rising operating costs and a rebound in healthcare utilization that has followed the suppressed demand of the early pandemic.
The strain on operations has resulted in five straight months of negative margins for health systems, according to Kaufman Hall’s latest hospital performance report.
Fitch said the majority of the hospitals it follows have strong balance sheets that will provide a cushion for a period of time. But with cost inflation at levels not seen since the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the potential for additional coronavirus surges this fall and winter, more substantial changes to hospitals’ business models could be necessary to avoid negative rating actions, the agency said.
Providers will look to secure much higher rate increases from commercial payers. However, insurers are under similar pressures as hospitals and will push back, using leverage gained through the sector’s consolidation, the report said.
As a result, commercial insurers’ rate increases are likely to exceed those of recent years, but remain below the rate of inflation in the short term, Fitch said. Further, federal budget deficits make Medicare or Medicaid rate adjustments to offset inflation unlikely.
An early look at state regulatory filings this summer suggests insurers who offer plans on the Affordable Care Act exchanges will seek substantial premium hikes in 2023, according to an analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The median rate increase requested by 72 ACA insurers was 10% in the KFF study.
Inflation is pushing more providers to consider mergers and acquisitions to create economies of scale, Fitch said. But regulators are scrutinizing deals more strenuously due to concerns that consolidation will push prices even higher. With increased capital costs, rising interest rates and ongoing supply chain disruptions, hospitals’ plans for expansion or renovations will cost more or may be postponed, the report said.
Concierge primary care company One Medical is reportedly considering a sale after receiving interest from CVS Health, according to Bloomberg. While talks with CVS are no longer active, sources familiar with the situation say the company is weighing offers from other suitors. Also this week, there were rumors that Humana is interested in acquiring Florida-based Cano Health, which provides comprehensive care to over 200K seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans across six states.
The Gist: We’ve long thought that the ultimate buyer for these primary care startups would be large, vertically integrated insurers, as many have struggled to achieve profitability while maintaining strong enrollment growth.
Competition among insurers to acquire care delivery assets has intensified, as payers look to Medicare Advantage as their primary growth vehicle, and aim to amass primary care networks capable of managing their growing senior care businesses.
HENRY KOTULA 