Category Archives: Physician Staffing

Lawmakers stress urgency of healthcare worker shortage

Posted on by • Posted in American Hospital Association (AHA), Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Labor Relations, Medicare Funding, Nurse Agency Staffing, Nurse Education, Nurse Staffing, Nurse Training, Nurse Travelers, Nurses Compensation, Nurses Shortage, Physician, Physician Residents, Physician Shortage, Physician Staffing, Physician Workforce • Leave a comment

https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/lawmakers-fixes-healthcare-workforce-shortages/642994/

Addressing the education pipeline is one thing that legislators could focus on to improve nurse and physician shortages, medical school and health system leaders said.

As the healthcare industry continues to face pandemic-driven workforce challenges, lawmakers are exploring ways to boost the number of clinicians practicing in the U.S.

“A shortage of healthcare personnel was a problem before the pandemic and now it has gotten worse,” Chairman Sen. Bernie Sanders I-Vt., said during a Thursday Senate HELP committee hearing. “Health care jobs have gotten more challenging and, in some cases, more dangerous,” he said.

The country faces a shortage of up to 124,000 physicians by 2034, including 48,000 primary care physicians, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Hospitals are currently facing shortages of registered nurses as burnout and other factors drive them to other roles. 

For example, 47-hospital system Ochsner Health in New Orleans has about 1,200 open nursing positions, Chief Academic Officer Leonardo Seoane said at Thursday’s hearing.

The workforce shortaged led Ochsner to close about 100 beds across its system during the past six months, leading to it use already-constrained emergency departments as holding bays for patients, he said.

Like other systems, labor costs have also been a concern due to a continued reliance on temporary staff to fill gaps. Ochsner’s non-agency labor costs grew just under 60% since 2019, while its costs for contract staff grew nearly 900%, he said.

“Our country is perilously short of nurses, and those we do have are often not working in the settings that could provide the most value,” Sarah Szanton, dean of Johns Hopkins School of Nursing said.

“This was true before the pandemic and has become more acute,” she said.

While many nurses left permanent roles for higher-paying contract positions during the pandemic, others have turned to jobs at outpatient clinics, coinciding with a shift toward non-hospital based care.

Registered nurse employment is nearly 5% above where it was in 2019, with nearly all that growth occurring outside of hospitals, Douglas Staiger, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, found in his research and said at the hearing.

One major concern: Driving current and projected shortages in hospitals that lawmakers can address is the educational pipeline, medical school and health system leaders said.

Educational programs for nurses and physicians face site shortages and educators who are often allured by other higher-paying jobs in the industry.

Nursing educators in Vermont earn about $65,000 a year — about half of what nurses with similar degrees working in hospitals earn, Sanders said during the hearing. He asked members to consider expanding the Nurse Corps and nurse faculty loan repayments, among other programs.

Supporting partnerships between universities and hospitals to create more training opportunities is another way Congress can help, along with addressing high costs of tuition, James Herbert, president of University of New England, said during the hearing.

“Scholarship and loan repayment programs are critical to make healthcare education more accessible for those who would otherwise find it out of reach,” Herbert said.

That includes expanding and improving Medicare-funded physician residencies, he said.

Creating a more diverse workforce that looks more like the population it serves is another important task, and one lawmakers can address by supporting historically black colleges and universities.

Federal funding could help improve classrooms and other infrastructure at HBCUs “that have been egregiously are underfunded for decades,” in addition to expanding Medicare-funded residencies for hospitals that train a large number of graduates for HBCU medical schools, said James Hildreth Sr., president and CEO at Meharry Medical College in Nashville.

The American Hospital Association submitted a statement to the HELP subcommittee and said it also supports increasing the number of residency slots eligible for Medicare funds and rejecting cuts to curb long-term physician shortages.

Other AHA supported policies to address current and long-term workforce shortages include better funding for nursing schools and supporting expedited visas for foreign-trained nurses.

AHA also asked lawmakers to look into travel nurse staffing agencies, reviving requests it made last year alleging that staffing companies engaged in price gouging during the pandemic.

Last year some state lawmakers considered capping the rate hospitals can pay agencies for temporary nursing staff, though none ended up passing legislation to do so.

Managing against a decline in “physician hours worked”

Posted on by • Posted in Physician, Physician Hospital Call, Physician Staffing, Physician Staffing - Private Equity Backed, Physician Workforce • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/4587dc321337/the-weekly-gist-october-14-2022?e=d1e747d2d8

Last week a health system chief medical officer asked if we were hearing other systems complain of difficulties in securing call coverage for key specialties, particularly orthopedics, GI and urology. We agreed: with proceduralists building larger outpatient businesses, often funded by investors, there is less incentive for groups to support hospital call. To fill the gaps, hospitals are having to negotiate lucrative deals for coverage, and the market feels like the “deal for every doc” years in the early 2000s, when specialists had leverage to negotiate bespoke partnership contracts. In this leader’s case, he ended up brokering a deal with gastroenterologists to serve in a hospital-based role, providing in-house coverage for consults. “These docs are able to make $600K a year, working about 30 hours per week. It’s insane,” he lamented. 
 
But beyond the cost of talent, he was concerned about the larger ramifications of these kind of roles on physician supply. “I’ve been thinking about a metric along the lines of ‘lifetime physician hours worked’, and how that has changed over time,” he shared. He explained that physicians of his generation expected to work 60- to 80- hour weeks for most of their careers. Most younger doctors want to work much less, say 40 or 50 hours.

Over a forty-year career, he calculated, the healthcare system could get 36,800, or roughly a third fewer, “lifetime work-hours” from a doctor starting today. And most early-career doctors also plan to retire younger. “Now don’t get me wrong,” he continued, “We probably worked too hard, and these younger guys are onto something.” But he was concerned about the ramifications for physician supply, and posited we are poised for a deep shortage of clinical talent.

Creating the future physician workforce will require not only training more doctors, but also finding ways to make their work hours more efficient, with greater use of technology and other caregivers, who must also be trained in greater numbers. It takes at least four years to train a nurse, and nearly a decade before a student entering medical school today becomes a practicing physician—we can’t afford such a long lag time before more physician capacity comes online.

Moody’s downgrades Envision Healthcare, says bankruptcy possible

Posted on by • Posted in Bankruptcy, Credit Downgrade, Credit Ratings, Financial Distress, Financial Pressure, Financial Viability, Financially Distressed, Physician Staffing, Physician Staffing - Private Equity Backed • Leave a comment

https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/moodys-downgrades-envision-healthcare-says-bankruptcy-possible?mkt_tok=NDIwLVlOQS0yOTIAAAGHIoNXD3RHJX9565s0VyIQfY4Uc14busfvrByxC5bYAOaGJlhBG7u8IwXVfkB87U6Jjbirffa4zrcOIdYpH9jOgLhMCdv-mgKhDKgBYygB

Envision will see weak liquidity over the following 12 to 18 months, and its $1.4B cash reserve will likely run dry by the end of next year.

Physician staffing company Envision Healthcare is struggling financially, and these struggles are reflected in a Moody’s Investors Service credit rating downgrade, which took into account ongoing labor pressures and a decline in volumes linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Moody’s, Envision will see weak liquidity over the following 12 to 18 months, and its $1.4 billion cash reserve will likely run dry by the end of next year. Moody’s said bankruptcy or restructuring is likely in the cards, and its Corporate Family Rating (CFR) has been downgraded from C to Caa3.

The rating action follows a series of transactions including restructuring of Envision’s senior secured credit facilities, and issuing a new revolving credit facility in July 2022 and other debt in April 2022 at its subsidiary, AmSurg. Moody’s deemed Envision’s transactions to be a distressed exchange, as the loans were exchanged at a price below par. That’s a default under Moody’s definition.

Envision’s capital structure is unsustainable, the rating agency said. Recovery rates for much of the company’s debt will be low. Moody’s expects operating performance will continue to deteriorate due to ongoing labor pressures within the industry, as well as rising interest rates that will cause interest expense to nearly double. 

The refinancing has not materially reduced debt, and while the maturities have been extended, Envision remains at risk of being unable to service its debt.

WHAT’S THE IMPACT

There are some factors in play that mitigate some of the risks. Envision has considerable scale and market position as one of the largest physician staffing outsourcers in the country, said Moody’s. The company has strong product diversification within its physician staffing and ambulatory surgery center segments.

However, continuing business pressures and increased interest expense will cause Envision’s free cash flow to be significantly negative in 2022 and beyond. 

When assigning the new ratings, Moody’s considered the expected loss on the Envision debt, which the Rating Agency expects will be significant. Moody’s noted that to the extent that there is asset recovery on the Envision business, the share of proceeds to the term loans will be applied to the Envision senior secured first out term loan before the other debt. But it’s expected that there will be material losses.

The outlook is stable for both Envision and the AmSurg subsidiary. Moody’s expects the company to remain distressed and there is a heightened risk of default given the weak liquidity and risks surrounding the ongoing sustainability of the business.

THE LARGER TREND

Envision operates an extensive emergency department, hospital, anesthesiology, radiology and neonatology physician outsourcing segment. The company also operates more than 250 ambulatory surgery centers in 34 states, and is owned by private equity firm KKR. Revenues for the period ending June 30 were about $7 billion.

Although it’s unlikely in the near term, a substantial improvement in Envision’s liquidity position –  including refinancing of the existing debt – would be needed to support an upgrade. Envision would also need an improvement in its operating performance, Moody’s said.

Earlier this month, Envision filed a lawsuit against UnitedHealthcare over the insurer’s denied claims, sparking a countersuit from UHC, which claimed Envision fraudulently upcoded claims for services provided to UHC members.

UHC removed Envision from its network last year, claiming the firm’s costs did not reflect fair market rates. According to Envision’s lawsuit, UHC denied about 18% of submitted commercial claims – a number that swelled to 48% of all claims after Envision’s removal from UHC networks, the firm said. And for the highest-acuity claims, Envision is accusing UHC of denying 60% of those claims.

Meanwhile, in June, physicians at Corona Regional Medical Center and Temecula Valley Hospital in California threatened to leave the hospitals if for-profit owner Universal Health Services changes the staffing management firm to Envision, according to an emergency room doctor who heads the hospitals’ current staffing firm, Emergent Medical Associates (EMA).
Physicians objected to Envision citing concerns of lower pay and staffing levels leading to lower quality of care.

Surprise billing ban leads to cuts at PE-backed staffing firms

Posted on by • Posted in Emergency Care, Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Physician Staffing, Physician Staffing - Private Equity Backed, Private Equity, Quality of Care, Surprise Bills • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/31b9e4f5100d/the-weekly-gist-june-03-2022?e=d1e747d2d8

 When Congress passed the “No Surprises Act” in 2021, credit rating agencies like Moody’s warned that the bill would hurt physician staffing firms, especially those that provide emergency department (ED) services, which result in a surprise bill in roughly one in five visits. A piece from investigative outlet The Lever highlights how one private equity-backed physician staffing firm, Nashville-based American Physician Partners, is responding to the resultant cash flow challenges by cutting ED physician pay, after already reducing staffing levels. As the article describes, this is possible in an otherwise tight labor market because, unlike many other specialties, there’s an oversupply of ED physicians, due to the rapid growth in emergency medicine residency programs over the last decade.  

The Gist: With two-thirds of hospitals outsourcing at least some ED physician labor, the potential insolvency of large physician staffing firms could bring a crisis in access and coverage. 

In addition to revenue cuts tied to the surprise billing ban, rising interest rates also mean that PE firms may soon find it more difficult to fund their aggressive growth strategies. 

Health systems should proactively evaluate their partnerships with PE-backed physician staffing groups, with an eye toward anticipating potential staffing problems and service quality shortfalls.

New campaign to thank health care workers

Posted on by • Posted in American Hospital Association (AHA), Forever Grateful, Front Lines, Gratitude, Health System, Healthcare Providers, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Nurse Agency Staffing, Nurse Staffing, Nurse Travelers, Nurses, Nurses Leadership, Physician Burnout, Physician Employment, Physician Leadership, Physician Staffing, Physician Workforce, Thank You, Thanks • Leave a comment
https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-vitals-255e2ec5-cfb6-4c53-bb7b-73cc08dc6984.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosvitals&stream=top

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.

Moody’s: Rising costs will slow hospitals rebuilding margins to pre-COVID-19 levels

Posted on by • Posted in Employee Staffing, Employee Staffing Shortage, Health Insurance Industry, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Labor Shortages, Labor Spend Management, Nurse Agency Staffing, Nurse Travelers, Nurses Compensation, Nurses Shortage, Operating Expenses, Operating Income, Operating Margin, Operating Metrics, Operating Performance, Operating Revenue, Physician Compensation, Physician Staffing • Leave a comment

https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/rising-costs-will-make-it-difficult-hospitals-rebuild-margins-pre-covid-levels-moodys-says

Operating cash flow margins for nonprofit hospitals fell to a median 7% in 2020.

A shortage of nurses and other workers will continue to erode hospital financial performance into 2022, according to a new Healthcare Quarterly report from Moody’s.

A rise in COVID-19 cases in various regions of the United States has contributed to a wave of nurses, often burned out, resigning to take care of family, to work in less acute healthcare settings such as ambulatory care or to pursue higher-paying contract opportunities, such as becoming a travel nurse.

Hospitals are also having difficulty finding other types of healthcare workers, such as respiratory therapists and imaging technicians, as well as nonclinical workers in areas such as dietary, housekeeping and environmental services.

WHY THIS MATTERS

The report holds no surprises for hospital executives, who already know the financial affect labor shortages are having on revenue. But Moody’s confirms projections that rising costs will make it difficult for hospitals to rebuild margins to pre-COVID-19 levels. 

Labor shortages are driving up costs and also may be limiting the number of lucrative elective procedures, resulting in lost revenue. Not-for-profit hospitals saw operating cash flow margins fall to a median 7% in 2020, from 8.3% in the three prior years, according to Moody’s median data.

Hospitals using contract nurses report that hourly wages are very high, in some cases higher now with the Delta variant than during earlier COVID-19 surges. Many hospitals and health systems have also increased minimum wages for nonclinical workers and are finding they must compete with other service sectors, such as the food industry, to attract nonclinical staff.

Given their substantial reliance on government reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid, most healthcare providers maintain limited pricing flexibility to offset the costs of higher wages. While there are opportunities for more lucrative commercial insurance contracts, rates are the subject of intense negotiations, limiting providers’ pricing power, Moody’s said. 

Providers with strong liquidity and diversified cash flow will remain better positioned to manage stress from cost constraints. Hospitals are taking steps to retain nurses, including developing “float pools” of nurses who can work in multiple departments, increasing retention and merit pay, and expanding healthcare benefits such as mental health and child care services. 

LifeBridge Health, a not-for-profit health system operating in Baltimore and Carroll County, Maryland, paid its nursing staff retention bonuses in December 2020 as the labor market tightened. To recruit nurses, many systems are offering signing bonuses in exchange for multi-year work commitments as well as scholarship and loan forgiveness programs with local nursing schools.

While these strategies will ease the effect of labor shortages over the long term, they will cause hospitals’ costs to increase in 2022 as salaries and benefits typically represent at least half of a hospital’s expenses. Labor shortages will also likely spark an increase in unionization efforts or lead to more difficult negotiations between unions and providers, potentially increasing costs via new contracts.

THE LARGER TREND

The quarterly report focused on the impact of labor shortages and cost pressures for various sectors, including hospitals, insurers, pharmaceuticals, healthcare services such as staffing firms and health insurers.

Health insurers are less affected by labor shortages, wage pressure and potentially burgeoning inflation than many other healthcare sectors, Moody’s said. Insurers reset premiums each year, which helps them to offset inflation. But if the government does not keep up with payment, providers will look to insurers to make up the shortfall. 

Large physician staffing companies, such as Envision Healthcare Corporation and Team Health Holdings, will experience pressure on their profitability as it becomes harder and more expensive to fill open positions as burnout and retirements decrease the number of doctors available to work.

Travel nurse staffing has higher profit margin resilience compared to physician staffing, the report said. 

For real estate investment trusts, worker shortages are slowing net operating income growth for REITs to invest in senior housing and skilled nursing facilities.

Growth in salaries and benefits has exceeded hospitals’ expense growth, a trend likely to continue for the remainder of 2021 and into 2022, Moody’s said in an earlier October report.

In one bright spot in the earlier report, Moody’s noted recent rises in nursing school enrollment indicating a more robust long-term staffing pipeline. However, the aging population, combined with a healthcare workforce that may be retiring from their jobs or quitting due to burnout, represent long-term healthcare staffing challenges nationwide.

Private equity as an enabler of Boomer doctor retirements

Posted on by • Posted in Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Physician, Physician Compensation, Physician Employment, Physician Exit Strategy, Physician Independence, Physician Practice Acquisition, Physician Practice Management, Physician Practice Valuation, Physician Retirement, Physician Staffing, Private Equity, Strategy, Talent Identification, Talent Imperative, Talent Management • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/13ef4dd36d77/the-weekly-gist-august-27-2021?e=d1e747d2d8

How Much Money Does a Doctor Need to Retire? — Finity Group, LLC

There’s been a lot of hand wringing over the ongoing feeding frenzy among private equity (PE) firms for physician practice acquisition, which has caused health system executives everywhere to worry about the displacement effect on physician engagement strategies (not to mention the inflationary impact on practice valuations).

While we’ve long believed that PE firms are not long-term owners of practices, instead playing a roll-up function that will ultimately end in broader aggregation by vertically-integrated insurance companies, a recent conversation with one system CEO reframed the phenomenon in a way we hadn’t thought of before. It’s all about a demographic shift, she argued.

There’s a generation of Boomer-aged doctors who followed their entrepreneurial calling and started their own practices, and are now nearing retirement age without an obvious path to exit the business. Many didn’t plan for retirement—rather than a 401(k), what they have is equity in the practice they built.

What the PE industry is doing now is basically helping those docs transition out of practice by monetizing their next ten years of income in the form of a lump-sum cash payout. You could have predicted this phenomenon decades ago.

The real question is what happens to the younger generations of doctors left behind, who have another 20 or 30 years of practice ahead of them? Will they want to work in a PE-owned (or insurer-owned) setting, or would they prefer health system employment—or something else entirely?

The answer to that question will determine the shape of physician practice for decades to come…at least until the Millennials start pondering their own retirement.

A mounting specialist access crisis

Posted on by • Posted in Access, Access & Quality of Healthcare, Acuity, Backlog, Delayed Care, Office Visit, Physician, Physician Practice Management, Physician Specialist, Physician Staffing, Physician Workforce, Schedule Backlog, Schedule Control, Scheduling • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/b5daf4456328/the-weekly-gist-july-23-2021?e=d1e747d2d8

Types of Doctors: Some Common Physician Specialties

We’ve been hearing a growing number of stories from patients about difficulties scheduling appointments for specialist consults.

A friend’s 8-year-old son experienced a new-onset seizure and was told that the earliest she could schedule a new patient appointment with a pediatric neurologist at the local children’s hospital was the end of November. Concerned about a five-month wait time after the scary episode, she asked what she should do in the meantime: “They told me if I want him to be seen sooner, bring him to the ED at the hospital if it happens again.”

A colleague shared his frustration after his PCP advised him to see a gastroenterologist. Calling six practices on the recommended referral list, the earliest appointment he could find was nine weeks out; the scheduler at one practice noted that with everyone now scheduling colonoscopies and other procedures postponed during the pandemic, they are busier than they’ve been in years. Recent conversations with medical group leaders confirm a specialist access crunch. 

Patients who delayed care last year are reemerging, and ones who were seen by telemedicine now want to come in person. “We are booked solid in almost every specialty, with wait times double what they were before COVID,” one medical group president shared. The spike in demand is compounded by staffing challenges: “I pray every day that another one of our nurses doesn’t quit, because it will take us months to replace them.”

Doctors and hospitals are now seeing a rise in acuity—cancers diagnosed at a more advanced stage, chronic disease patients presenting with more severe complications—due to care delayed by the pandemic. If patients can’t schedule needed appointments and procedures, this spike in severity could be prolonged, or even made worse. 

For medical groups who can find ways to open additional access, it’s also an opportunity to capture new business and engender greater patient loyalty.

‘Shkreli Awards’ Shame Healthcare Profiteers

Posted on by • Posted in Board, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Clinical Research, Conflict, Conflicts of Interest, Coronavirus, Employee Termination, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Greed, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Hydroxychloroquine, Intimidation, Nursing Home, Pandemic, Pandemic Profiteers, Patient Dumping, Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), Pharmaceutical Industry, Physician Staffing, Private Equity, Shareholder Primacy, Shkreli Awards, Supply Chain, Threat, Threats, Uncategorized, Unnecessary Care, Vaccine • Leave a comment
https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/generalprofessionalissues/90557?trw=no&fbclid=IwAR1i2AwdduuAKUG8tEpEBvS_yVdfL6IThJ4xr4Mwc6FlXzqJGfkyM4U6o-w

Lown Institute berates greedy pricing, ethical lapses, wallet biopsies, and avoidable shortages.

Greedy corporations, uncaring hospitals, individual miscreants, and a task force led by Jared Kushner were dinged Tuesday in the Lown Institute‘s annual Shkreli awards, a list of the top 10 worst offenders for 2020.

Named after Martin Shkreli, the entrepreneur who unapologetically raised the price of an anti-parasitic drug by a factor of 56 in 2015 (now serving a federal prison term for unrelated crimes), the list of shame calls out what Vikas Saini, the institute’s CEO, called “pandemic profiteers.” (Lown bills itself as “a nonpartisan think tank advocating bold ideas for a just and caring system for health.”)

Topping the list was the federal government itself and Jared Kushner, President’s Trump’s son-in-law, who led a personal protective equipment (PPE) procurement task force. The effort, called Project Airbridge, was to “airlift PPE from overseas and bring it to the U.S. quickly,” which it did.

“But rather than distribute the PPE to the states, FEMA gave these supplies to six private medical supply companies to sell to the highest bidder, creating a bidding war among the states,” Saini said. Though these supplies were supposed to go to designated pandemic hotspots, “no officials from the 10 hardest hit counties” said they received PPE from Project Airbridge. In fact, federal agencies outbid states or seized supplies that states had purchased, “making it much harder and more expensive” for states to get supplies, he said.

Number two on the institute’s list: vaccine maker Moderna, which received nearly $1 billion in federal funds to develop its mRNA COVID-19 preventive. It set a price of between $32 and $37 per dose, more than the U.S. agreed to pay for other COVID vaccines. “Although the U.S. has placed an order for $1.5 billion worth of doses at a discount, a price of $15 per dose, given the upfront investment by the U.S. government, we are essentially paying for the vaccine twice,” said Lown Institute Senior Vice President Shannon Brownlee.

Webcast panelist Don Berwick, MD, former acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, noted that a lot of work went into producing the vaccine at an impressive pace, “and if there’s not an immune breakout, we’re going to be very grateful that this happened.” But, he added, “I mean, how much money is enough? Maybe there needs to be some real sense of discipline and public spirit here that goes way beyond what any of these companies are doing.”

In third place: four California hospital systems that refused to take COVID-19 patients or delayed transfers from hospitals that were out of beds. A Wall Street Journal investigation found that these refusals or delays were based on the patients’ ability to pay; many were on Medicaid or were uninsured.

“In the midst of such a pandemic, to continue that sort of behavior is mind boggling,” said Saini. “This is more than the proverbial wallet biopsy.”

The remaining seven offenders:

4. Poor nursing homes decisions, especially one by Soldiers’ Home for Veterans in western Massachusetts, that worsened an already terrible situation. At Soldiers’ Home, management decided to combine the COVID-19 unit with a dementia unit because they were low on staff, said Brownlee. That allowed the virus to spread rapidly, killing 76 residents and staff as of November. Roughly one-third of all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have been in long-term care facilities.

5. Pharmaceutical giants AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, which refused to share intellectual property on COVID-19, instead deciding to “compete for their profits instead,” Saini said. The envisioned technology access pool would have made participants’ discoveries openly available “to more easily develop and distribute coronavirus treatments, vaccines, and diagnostics.”

Saini added that he was was most struck by such an attitude of “historical blindness or tone deafness” at a time when the pandemic is roiling every single country.

Berwick asked rhetorically, “What would it be like if we were a world in which a company like Pfizer or Moderna, or the next company that develops a really great breakthrough, says on behalf of the well-being of the human race, we will make this intellectual property available to anyone who wants it?”

6. Elizabeth Nabel, MD, CEO of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, because she defended high drug prices as a necessity for innovation in an op-ed, without disclosing that she sat on Moderna’s board. In that capacity, she received $487,500 in stock options and other payments in 2019. The value of those options quadrupled on the news of Moderna’s successful vaccine. She sold $8.5 million worth of stock last year, after its value nearly quadrupled. She resigned from Moderna’s board in July and, it was announced Tuesday, is leaving her CEO position to join a biotech company founded by her husband.

7. Hospitals that punished clinicians for “scaring the public,” suspending or firing them, because they “insisted on wearing N95 masks and other protective equipment in the hospital,” said Saini. Hospitals also fired or threatened to fire clinicians for speaking out on COVID-19 safety issues, such as the lack of PPE and long test turnaround times.

Webcast panelist Mona Hanna-Attisha, MD, the Flint, Michigan, pediatrician who exposed the city’s water contamination, said that healthcare workers “have really been abandoned in this administration” and that the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration “has pretty much fallen asleep at the wheel.” She added that workers in many industries such as meatpacking and poultry processing “have suffered tremendously from not having the protections or regulations in place to protect [them].”

8. Connecticut internist Steven Murphy, MD, who ran COVID-19 testing sites for several towns, but conducted allegedly unnecessary add-ons such as screening for 20 other respiratory pathogens. He also charged insurers $480 to provide results over the phone, leading to total bills of up to $2,000 per person.

“As far as I know, having an MD is not a license to steal, and this guy seemed to think that it was,” said Brownlee.

9. Those “pandemic profiteers” who hawked fake and potentially harmful COVID-19 cures. Among them: televangelist Jim Bakker sold “Silver Solution,” containing colloidal silver, and the “MyPillow Guy,” Mike Lindell, for his boostering for oleandrin.

“Colloidal silver has no known health benefits and can cause seizures and organ damage. Oleandrin is a biological extract from the oleander plant and known for its toxicity and ingesting it can be deadly,” said Saini.

Others named by the Lown Institute include Jennings Ryan Staley, MD — now under indictment — who ran the “Skinny Beach Med Spa” in San Diego which sold so-called COVID treatment packs containing hydroxychloroquine, antibiotics, Xanax, and Viagra, all for $4,000.

Berwick commented that such schemes indicate a crisis of confidence in science, adding that without facts and science to guide care, “patients get hurt, costs rise without any benefit, and confusion reigns, and COVID has made that worse right now.”

Brownlee mentioned the “huge play” that hydroxychloroquine received and the FDA’s recent record as examples of why confidence in science has eroded.

10. Two private equity-owned companies that provide physician staffing for hospitals, Team Health and Envision, that cut doctors’ pay during the first COVID-19 wave while simultaneously spending millions on political ads to protect surprise billing practices. And the same companies also received millions in COVID relief funds under the CARES Act.

Berwick said surprise billing by itself should receive a deputy Shkreli award, “as out-of-pocket costs to patients have risen dramatically and even worse during the COVID pandemic… and Congress has failed to act. It’s time to fix this one.”

Mednax sells off its radiology division

Posted on by • Posted in Divestitures, Elective Procedures, Market Consolidation, Market Power, Market Trends, Market Uncertainty, Mergers & Acquisitions, Pandemic, Physician, Physician Practice Management, Physician Practice Valuation, Physician Staffing, Private Equity, Radiology Industry, Teleradiology • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/365734463200/the-weekly-gist-september-11-2020?e=d1e747d2d8

M&A Analysis: Mednax to Sell its Radiology and Teleradiology Business -

National physician staffing firm Mednax announced the sale of its radiology practice—which includes teleradiology company Virtual Radiologic, known as vRad—to venture-backed Radiology Partners for $885M.

Publicly-traded Mednax has been hit hard by both contracting disputes with UnitedHealthcare, as well as pandemic-related volume declines. Both its anesthesiology and radiology businesses suffered big losses with the halt of elective procedures in the spring, and saw volumes decline between 50-70 percent compared to the prior year.

The company began divesting in May with the sale of its anesthesiology division to investor-backed North American Partners in Anesthesia. Mednax leaders say these decisions to sell were made independent of the pandemic, and that they have been planning to return to the company’s roots of focusing exclusively on obstetrics and pediatric subspecialty care, including changing its name back to Pediatrix.

Acquiring firm Radiology Partners is the largest radiology practice in the country, working with 1,300 hospitals and healthcare facilities. With this acquisition, it will have 2,400 radiologists practicing in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Hospital-based physician staffing firms have been especially hard hit by COVID-induced volume declines. This has created a softening in valuations and opened the door for investment firms to accelerate practice purchases.

We expect the pace of deals to quicken as independent practices experience continued financial strain—with large national groups leading the way, taking advantage of lower practice prices to build large-scale specialty enterprises.