Category Archives: Profit Model

United Healthcare: Anatomy of a Behemoth

Posted on by • Posted in Antitrust, Competition, Health Insurance Industry, Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Market Consolidation, Market Power, Medical Loss Ratio (MLR), Optum Health, Optum Insight, Optum Rx, Pharmacy Benefits Management, Profit Model, Profit Motive, UnitedHealth Group, UnitedHealthcare, Value Proposition, Value-Based Healthcare, Vertical Integration • Leave a comment

medium.com/@tcoyote/united-healthcare-anatomy-of-a-behemoth-63dc5f1b485a

In the mid-1980’s, managed care advocate Dr. Paul Ellwood predicted that eventually, US healthcare would be dominated by perhaps a dozen vast national firms he called SuperMeds that would combine managed care based health insurance with care delivery systems. Ellwood was a leader of the “managed competition” movement which advocated for a private sector alternative to a federal government-run National Health Insurance system. Ellwood and colleagues believed that Kaiser Foundation Health Plans and other HMOs would be able to stabilize health costs and thus affordably extend care to the uninsured.

The US political system and market dynamics would not co-operate with Ellwood and his Jackson Hole Group’s vision. In the ensuing thirty-five years, healthcare has remained both highly fragmented and regional in focus. However, unbeknownst to most, during the past decade, as a result of a major merger and relentless smaller acquisitions, two SuperMeds were born- CVS/Aetna and UnitedHealth Group, that whose combined revenues comprise 14% of total US health spending.

CVS/Aetna is slightly larger than United, by dint of grocery sales in its drugstores and its vast Caremark pharmacy benefits management business. However, CVS’s Aetna health insurance arm is one third the size of United’s, and though CVS is rapidly scaling up its care delivery apparatus through its in-store Health Hubs, it remains is a tiny fraction of United’s care footprint. Despite being slightly smaller at the top line, United’s market capitalization is more than 3.5 times that of CVS.

United’s vast scope is difficult to comprehend because much of it is not visible to the naked eye, and the most rapidly growing businesses are partly nested inside United’s health insurance business.

United employs over 300 thousand people. At $287.6 billion total revenues in 2021, United exceeded 7% of total US health spending (though $8.3 billion are from overseas operations).

In 2021, United was $100 billion larger than the British National Health Service. It is more than three times the size of Kaiser Permanente, and five times the size of HCA, the nation’s largest hospital chain. United is both larger and richer than energy giant Exxon Mobil. United has over $70 billion in cash and investments, and is generating about $2 billion a month in operating cash flow.

Its highly regulated health insurance business is the visible tip of a rapidly growing iceberg. Revenue from United’s core health insurance business grew at 11% in 2021, compared to 14% growth in United’s diversified Optum subsidiary. Optum generated $155.6 billion in 2021 (of which 60% were from INSIDE United’s health insurance business). You can see the relationship of Optum’s three major businesses to United’s health insurance operations in Exhibit I.

Optum is the Key to United’s Growth

Understanding the role of Optum is key to understanding United’s business. It is remarkable how few of my veteran health care colleagues have any idea what Optum is or what it does. Optum was once a sort of dumping ground for assorted United acquisitions without a seeming core purpose. A private equity colleague once derided Optum as “The Island of Lost Toys”. Now, however, Optum is driving United’s growth, and generates billions of dollars in unregulated profits both from inside the highly regulated core health insurance business and from external customers.

Optum consists of three parts: Optum Health, its care delivery enterprise ($54 billion revenues in 2021), Optum Rx, its pharmacy benefits management enterprise ($91 billion revenues in 2021) and Optum Insight, a diversified business services enterprise ($12.2 billion in 2021). Virtually all of United’s acquisitions join one of these three businesses.

Optum Health: The Third Largest Care Delivery Enterprise in the US

By itself, Optum Health is almost the size of HCA ($54 billion in 2021 vs HCA’s $58.7 billion) and consists of a vast national portfolio of care delivery entities: large physician groups, urgent care centers, surgicenters, imaging centers, and now by dint of the recently announced $5.7 billion acquisition of LHC, home health agencies. Optum Health has studiously avoided acquiring beds of any kind: hospitals, nursing homes, etc. and likely will continue to do so. Optum Health’s physician groups not only generate profits on their own, but also provide powerful leverage for United to control health costs for its own subscribers, pushing down United’s highly visible and regulated Medical Loss Ratio (MLR), and increasing health plan profits.

Optum Health began in 2007 when United acquired Nevada-based Sierra Health, and thus became the new owner of a small multispecialty physician group which Sierra owned. The group did not belong in United’s health insurance business and came to rest over in Optum. Over the past twelve years, Optum Health has acquired an impressive percentage of the major capitated medical groups in the US- Texas’ WellMed, California’s HealthCare Partners (from DaVita), as well as Monarch, AppleCare and North American Medical Management, Massachusetts’ Reliant (formerly Fallon Clinic) and Atrius in Massachusetts (pending) , Kelsey Seybold Clinic (also pending) in Houston, TX and Everett Clinic and PolyClinic in Seattle.

Optum Health claims over 60 thousand physicians, though many of these are actually independent physicians participating in “wrap around” risk contracting networks. By comparison, Kaiser Permanente’s Medical Groups employ about 23 thousand physicians. United’s management claims that Optum Health provides continuing care to about 20 million patients, of whom 3 million are covered by some form of so-called “value based” contracts. Perhaps half of this smaller number are covered by capitated (percentage of premium-PMPM) contracts.

Optum Health straddles fierce competitive relationships between United’s health insurance business and competing health plans in well more than a dozen metropolitan areas. Almost half (44%) of Optum Health’s revenues come from providing care for health plans other than United.

When Optum acquires a large physician group, it acquires those groups’ contracts with United’s health insurance competitors, some of which contracts have been in place for decades. Premium revenues from other health plans, presumably capitation or per member per month (PMPM) revenues, are one-quarter of Optum Health’s $54 billion total revenues. These “external” premium revenues have quadrupled since 2018, largely for Medicare Advantage subscribers. Optum Health contributes about $4.5 billion in operating profit to United. It is impossible to determine from United’s disclosures how much of this profit comes from Optum Health’s services provided to United’s insured lives and how much from its medical groups’ extensive contracts with competing health plans.

Optum Health’s surgicenters and urgent care centers provide affordable alternatives to using expensive hospital outpatient services and emergency departments, potentially further reducing United medical expense. This creates obvious tensions with United’s hospital networks, since Optum Health can use its large medical practices and virtual care offerings to divert patients from hospitals to its own services, or else render those services unnecessary.

Though some observers have termed Optum/United’s business model “vertical integration”-ownership of the suppliers to and distributors of a firm’s product– Optum Health has actually grown less vertical since 2018, with revenues from competing health plans growing from 36% of total revenues in 2018 to 44% in 2021. A 2018 analysis by ReCon Strategy found at best a sketchy matchup between United’s health plan enrollment by market and its Optum Health assets (https://reconstrategy.com/2018/04/uniteds-medicare-advantage-footprint-and-optumcare-network-do-not-overlap-much-so-far/.

Optum Rx: The Nation’s Third Largest Pharmacy Benefits Management Business

Optum’s largest business in revenues is its Optum Rx pharmaceutical benefits management (PBM) business, which generates $91 billion in revenues, and processes over a billion pharmacy claims not only for United but also many competing insurers and employer groups. Pharmaceutical costs are a rapidly growing piece of total medical expenses, and controlling them is yet another source of largely unregulated profits for United; Optum Rx generated over $4.1 billion of operating profit in 2021.

Optum Rx is the nation’s third largest PBM business after Caremark, owned by CVS/Aetna and Express Scripts, owned by CIGNA, and processes about 21% of all scripts written in the US. Pharmacy benefits management firms developed more than two decades ago to speed the conversion of patients from expensive branded drugs to generics on behalf of insurers and self-funded employers. They were given a big boost by George Bush’s 2004 Medicare Part D Prescription Drug benefit, as a “pro-competitive” private sector alternative to Medicare directly negotiating prices with pharmaceutical firms.

Reducing drug spending is one key to United’s profitability. Since generics represent almost 90% of all prescriptions written, Optum Rx now relies on fees generated by processing prescriptions and on rebates from pharmaceutical firms to promote their costly branded drugs as preferred drugs on Optum Rx’s formularies. These rebates are determined based on “list” prices for those drugs vs. the contracted price for the PBMs, and are actual cash payments from manufacturers to PBMs.

Drug rebates represent a significant fraction of operating profits for health insurers that own PBMs, particularly for their older Medicare Advantage patients that use a lot of expensive drugs. Unfortunately, PBMs have incentives to inflate the list price, because rebates are caculated based on the spread between list prices and the contract pricel Unfortunately, this increases subscribers’ cash outlays, because patient cost shares are based on list prices.

Optum Rx generates about 39% of its revenues (and an undeterminable percentage of its profits) serving other health insurers and self-funded employers. Many of those self-funded employers demand that Optum pass through the rebates directly to them (even if it means being charged higher administrative fees!).

Unlike the situation with Optum Health, the “verticality” of Optum’s PBM business-the percentage of Optum revenues derived from serving United subscribers- has increased in the last seven years, to more than 60% of Optum Rx’s total business. What happens to the billions of dollars in rebates generated by Optum Rx is impossible to determine from United’s disclosures. However, our best guess is that pharmaceutical rebates represent as much as a quarter of United’s total corporate profits.

Optum Insight: “Intelligent” Business Solutions

The fastest growing and by far the most profitable Optum business is its business intelligence/business services/consulting subsidiary. Optum Insight was generated $12.2 billion in revenues in 2021, but a 27.9% operating margin, five times that of United’s health insurance business. Optum Insight is strategically vital to enhancing the profitability of United’s health insurance activities, but also generates outside revenues selling services to United’s health insurance competitors and hospital networks.

The core of Optum Insight is a business intelligence enterprise formerly known as Ingenix, which provided “big data” to United and other insurers about hospital and pricing behavior and utilization-crucial both for benefits design and administration. In 2009, Ingenix was accused by New York State of under reporting prices for out of network health services for itself and its clients, which had the effect of reducing its own medical reimbursements, and increasing patient cost shares. United signed a consent decree to alter Ingenix business practices and settled a raft of lawsuits filed on behalf of patients, physicians and employers. Its name was subsequently changed to Optum Insight.

By dint of aggressive acquisitions, Optum Insight has dramatically increased its medical claims management business, consulting services and business process outsourcing activities. . Most of United’s investment in artificial intelligence can be found inside Optum Insight. Big data plays a crucial role in United’s overall strategy. Optum Insight’s claims management software uses vast medical claims data bases and artificial intelligence/machine learning software to spot and deny medical claims for which documentation is inadequate or where services are either “inappropriate” or else not covered by an individual’s health plan. Providers also claim that the same software rejects as many as 20% of their claims, often for problems as tiny as a mis-spelled word or a missing data field.

Optum Insight software plays a crucial role in helping United’s health insurance plans manage their medical expense. Traditional health plan profitability is generated by reducing medical expense relative to collected premiums to increase underwriting profit. These profits are regulated, with highly variable degrees of rigor by state health insurance commissioners, and also by provisions of ObamaCare enacted in 2010.

Though its acquisition of Equian in 2019 and the proposed $13 billion acquisition of health information technology conglomerate Change Healthcare in 2021, United came within an eyelash of a near monopoly on “intelligent” medical claims processing software. The Justice Department challenged this latter acquisition and United may agree to divest Change’s claims processing software business as a condition of closing the deal. Even without the Change acquisition, Optum Insight processes hundreds of millions of medical claims annually not only for United’s health insurance business but for many of United’s competitors.

However, Optum Insight’s claims management system can also be used to increase MLR if medical expense unexpectedly declines, exposing the firm to federal requirement that it rebate excessive ‘savings’ to subscribers. This happened in 2020, when the COVID pandemic dramatically and unexpectedly added billions to United’s earnings due to hospitals suspending elective care. The chart below shows United’s 2Q2020 earnings per share almost doubling due to the precipitous drop in its medical claims expenses!

Hospital finance colleagues reported an immediate and substantial drop in medical claims denials from United and other carriers in the summer and fall of 2020. United’s quarterly profits dutifully and steeply declined in the subsequent two quarters, because its medical expenses sharply rebounded. The rise in

United’s medical expenses helped the firm avoid premium rebates to patients required by provisions of the ObamaCare legislation passed in 2010. The firm did voluntarily rebate about $1.5 billion to many of its customers in June, 2020.

However the most rapidly growing part of Optum Insight is its Optum 360 business process outsourcing business, which helps hospitals manage their billing and collections revenue cycle, as well as information technology operations, supply chain (purchasing and materials management) and other services. Through Optum 360, Optum Insight has signed five long term master contracts in the past two years’ worth many billions of dollars with care providers in California, Missouri and other states to provide a broad range of business services.

With all these different businesses, it is theoretically possible for one piece of Optum to be reducing a hospital’s cash flow by denying medical claims for United subscribers, while United’s health insurance network managers bargain aggressively to reduce the hospital’s reimbursement rates while yet another piece of Optum runs the billing and collection services for the same hospital and its employed physicians, while yet another piece of Optum competes with the hospital’s physicians and ambulatory services, diverting patients from its ERs and clinics, reducing the hospital’s revenues.

It is not difficult to imagine a future in which Optum/United offers hospital systems an Optum 360 outsourcing contract that run most of the business operations of a hospital system in exchange for preferred United health plan rates, an AI-enabled EZ pass on its medical claims denials and inpatient referrals from Optum physician groups and urgent care centers, at the expense of competing hospitals.

Managing these potential conflicts will be an increasing challenge as these various businesses grow, placing intense pressure on United’s leadership to get the various pieces of United to work together. To many anxious hospital executives, United resembles nothing so much as the Kraken, rising up out of the sea, surrounding and engulfing them- a powerful friend perhaps or a fearsome foe. As you might expect, United’s growing market power and growth has generated a fierce backlash in the hospital management community.

What Business is United Healthcare In?

United Healthcare is the most successful business in the history of American healthcare. The rapid growth of Optum and continued health insurance enrollment growth from government programs like Medicaid and Medicare has created a cash engine which generates nearly $2 billion a month in free cash flow. Optum’s portfolio has given United an impressive array of tools, unequalled in the industry, to improve its profitability and to reach into every corner of the US health system. United Healthcare is managed care on steroids.

United’s diversified portfolio of businesses gives the firm what a finance-savvy colleague termed “optionality”- the ability to redirect capital and management attention to areas of growth and away from areas that have ceased to grow, in the US or overseas. With its substantial investable capital, it will have the pick of the litter of the 11 thousand digital health companies as the overextended digital health market consolidates. United will be able to use its vast resources to build state-of-the-art digital infrastructure to reach and retain patients and manage their care.

United’s main short term business risks seem to be running out of accretive transactions effectively to deploy its growing horde of capital and managing the firm’s rising political exposure. United has had tremendous business discipline and has shied away from speculative acquisitions that are not immediately accretive to earnings. If its earnings growth falters, however, it will also encounter pressure from the investment community to increase dividends (presently about 1.2%) or share buybacks to bolster its share price, or else divest some or all of Optum in order to “maximize shareholder value”.

Answering the question, “What Business is United In” is simple: just about everything in health but hospitals and nursing homes.

Answering the questions- who are its customers and what do they want? — is a great deal harder. The customers United serves are in a sort of cold war with one another. United’s original business was protecting employers from health cost growth , and tempering the influence of hospitals and doctors by reducing their rates and utilization. By fostering so-called Consumer Directed Health Plans that expose many of their subscribers to very high front-end copayments, United and its health insurance brethren, have also increased their out-of-pocket costs, whether they have the savings to pay them or not.

There are also some ironies in United’s development. Optum Insight’s suite of hospital business services are designed to reduce administrative costs created in major part by United and other insurers’ medical claims data requirements. Its PBM business, originally intended to reduce drug spending by bargaining aggressively with pharmaceutical manufacturers has ended up pushing up drug list prices and consumer cost shares.

While presumably everybody benefits if United can somehow help patients become and remain healthy, it is still far from obvious how to do this. Managing all these markedly divergent customer needs will be a tremendous management challenge for whoever succeeds United’s reclusive (and very effective) 70 year old Chairman Stephen Hemsley.

What Does Society Get from this Vast Enterprise?

However, as Peter Drucker told a different generation of business giants, businesses are not entities unto themselves, accountable only to shareholders and customers. They are organs of society, and are expected to create social value. Americans are suspicious of vast enterprises, as businesses from Standard Oil, US Steel and ATT to Microsoft and Facebook have learned. As businesses grow and become more successful, public suspicion grows.

Private health insurers already face strident opposition from progressive Democrats, who believe that health coverage ought to be a public good, a right of citizenship provided publicly; in other words, that private health insurers have no business being in business. And large insurers like United also face intense opposition from hospitals and many physicians because they reduce their incomes and impose major administrative burdens upon them.

In the age of Twitter and TikTok, United is highly vulnerable to “event risks” that confirm the hostile narratives of the firm’s detractors that United is mainly about maximizing its own profits, not about improving the health of its subscribers or the communities it serves. It is not clear how many the tens of millions of United subscribers have warm and fuzzy feelings about their giant health insurer. Memories of the HMO backlash of the 1990’s reside in the firm’s corporate memory.

United has grown to its present immense scale largely without public knowledge. United has within its reach the capability of constraining overall health cost growth across dozens of metropolitan areas and regions, not merely cost growth for its own beneficiaries (roughly one in seven US citizens already get their health insurance through United). With its expanding digital health operations, it can deploy state of the art tools for helping United’s 50 million subscribers avoid illness and live healthier lives.

United also has the ability to damage the financial operations of beloved local hospitals and deny coverage to families, raising their out of pocket expenses. How United frames and defends its social mission and how it manages all the delicate and increasingly fraught customer relationships will determine its future, and in important ways, ours as well.

View at Medium.com

CVS Health exits clinical trial business

Posted on by • Posted in Clinical Trial Recruitment, Clinical Trials, CVS Health, For-Profit, Private Equity, Profit Margin, Profit Model, Profit Motive • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/73102bc1514d/the-weekly-gist-may-19-2023?e=d1e747d2d8

On Wednesday, CVS revealed plans to phase out its clinical trials unit by December 2024. The company launched the business line in 2021, building off its successful participation engaging CVS patrons in COVID vaccine and treatment studies.

With 40 percent of Americans living near a CVS pharmacy, the company had hoped to facilitate the decentralization of the clinical trials business, recruiting patients who lived in markets without academic medical centers, with goals to engage 10M patients across 150 research sites. However, to date it has only enrolled 33K participants, just over 10 percent of its COVID vaccine volunteer patient cohort. 

The Gist: While CVS appears to be focusing on its faster-growing Medicare Advantage and provider businesses, following its expensive acquisitions of Oak Street Health and Signify Health, the promise for decentralized clinical research remains. 

Traditional clinical trials often suffer from low participation; recruiting from more diverse populations would improve enrollment and could enhance the quality of research conducted. 

Decentralization is also a win for patients, providing access to clinical trials for lower-income patients who may have difficulty regularly traveling to academic centers. Other players, ranging from startups to retail giants like Walmart and Walgreens, remain active in this space. While we hope they may bring new models to market, they will likely evaluate their programs against similar business decisions and profit objectives. 

The ethics and legality of private equity (PE) once again in the spotlight

Posted on by • Posted in Ethical Pitfalls, Ethics, Health Insurance Industry, Healthcare Industry, Legal, Legal Challenges, Market Consolidation, Market Power, Market Trends, Mergers & Acquisitions, Private Equity, Profit Model, Profit Motive • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/46ca38d3d25e/the-weekly-gist-november-4-2022?e=d1e747d2d8

 In a recent STAT News article, reporters Tara Bannow and Bob Herman took an in-depth look at private-equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, examining the performance of four of its healthcare portfolio companies. They show how the firm’s A-list partners, clients, and board members have promoted controversial business practices—often at the expense of publicly funded healthcare programs—that conflict with its well-curated public image.

The Gist: This article emphasizes how the complex and opaque regulatory structure of American healthcare allows motivated parties like PE firms to find technically legal, though ethically suspect, business models, which can easily tip over into outright illegality.

It highlights the “revolving door” flow of executives between industry and government, which allows investment firms to play a long game by actively shaping the regulatory landscape and lobbying to create business opportunities where none previously existed. Justified backlash at “gotcha” business models and profit-seeking at the expense of vulnerable patients may swamp any positive contribution that PE investment and rollups may make to the business of healthcare.

Private equity (PE)-backed physician practices increase healthcare spending and utilization

Posted on by • Posted in Affordability, Cost Management, High-Value Activity, Market Consolidation, Market Power, Market Trends, Overtreatment, Overutilization, Ownership-Induced Overutilization, Private Equity, Profit Margin, Profit Model, Profit Motive • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/6a3812741768/the-weekly-gist-september-9-2022?e=d1e747d2d8

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.

Critics say Mark Cuban’s pharmacy isn’t tackling the big issue: brand-name drugs

Posted on by • Posted in Deferred Healthcare, Health Policy, High Deductible Health Plans, High Drug Prices, Out of Pocket Expenses, Pharmaceutical Industry, Profit Margin, Profit Model, Profit Motive • Leave a comment
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/pharmacy/critics-say-mark-cuban-s-pharmacy-isn-t-tackling-the-big-issue-brand-name-drugs.html?utm_medium=email&utm_content=newsletter

Mark Cuban’s pharmacy, Cost Plus Drug Co., has hundreds of drugs marked at discounted prices, but some pharmacy experts say there’s a larger problem that needs fixing, CNBC reported July 28. 

The online pharmacy launched in January with about 100 drugs, and by its one-year anniversary, plans to have more than 1,500 medications, according to the company’s website. The business model, which allocates for a $3 pharmacy dispensing fee, $5 shipping fee and a 15 percent profit margin with each order, aims to uproot the pharmaceutical industry, which has faced criticism for years about its opaque business practices. 

Gabriel Levitt, the president of PharmacyChecker, a company that monitors the cheapest drug prices, told CNBC there’s more to be done.

“As much as I support the venture, what they’re doing does not address the big elephant in the room,” Mr. Levitt said. “It’s really brand-name drugs that are increasing in price every year and forcing millions of Americans to cut back on medications or not take them at all.”

Brand-name drugs are 80 percent to 85 percent more expensive than generics since brand-name drugs have to repeat clinical tests to prove efficacy, according to the FDA. Cost Plus Drug Co. only offers generics. Mr. Cuban told CNBC he hopes to sell brand-name medications “within six months,” but added that it’s a tentative timeline.

Biden administration begins to implement a ban on surprise bills

Posted on by • Posted in Ambulance, Emergency Care, For-Profit, Health Policy, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Out of Pocket Expenses, Out-of-Network, Price Transparency, Private Equity, Profit Model • Leave a comment

https://mailchi.mp/bfba3731d0e6/the-weekly-gist-july-2-2021?e=d1e747d2d8

Biden Faces Health Industry Fight Over New 'Surprise' Billing Ban

On Thursday, the Biden administration issued the first of what is expected to be a series of new regulations aimed at implementing the No Surprises Act, passed by Congress last year and signed into law by President Trump, which bans so-called “surprise billing” by out-of-network providers involved in a patient’s in-network hospital visit.

The interim final rule, which takes effect in 2022, prohibits surprise billing of patients covered by employer-sponsored and individual marketplace plans, requiring providers to give advance warning if out-of-network physicians will be part of a patient’s care, limiting the amount of patient cost-sharing for bills issued by those providers, and prohibiting balance billing of patients for fees in excess of in-network reimbursement amounts.

The rule also establishes a process for determining allowable rates for out-of-network care, involving comparison to prevailing statewide rates or the involvement of a neutral arbitrator, but falls short of specifying a baseline price for arbitrators to use in determining allowable charges. That methodology, along with other details, will be part of future rulemaking, which will be issued later this year.

Of note, the rule does not include a ban on surprise billing for ground ambulance services, which were excluded by Congress in the law’s final passage—even though more than half of all ambulance trips result in an out-of-network bill. Expect intense lobbying by industry interests to continue as the details of future rulemaking are worked out, as has been the case since before the law was passed.

While burdensome for patients, surprise billing has become a lucrative business model for some large, investor-owned specialist groups, who will surely look to minimize the law’s impact on their profits.

Rational Exuberance for Medicare Advantage Market Disrupters

Posted on by • Posted in Aging Population, Business Model, Business Valuation, Disruption, Investment, Investment Banking, Investments, Market Outlook, Market Trends, Market Value, Medicare Advantage, Population Health, Private Equity, Profit Model, Profit Motive, Social Determinants of Health, Utilization Trends, Value Creation, Value Proposition • Leave a comment

Click to access Industry_Insights_6.23.21.pdf

Insurers Running Medicare Advantage Plans Overbill Taxpayers By Billions As Feds Struggle To Stop It | Kaiser Health News

Medicare Advantage (MA) focused companies, like Oak Street
Health (14x revenues), Cano Health (11x revenues), and Iora
Health (announced sale to One Medical at 7x revenues), reflect
valuation multiples that appear irrational to many market observers. Multiples may be
exuberant, but they are not necessarily irrational.


One reason for high valuations across the healthcare sector is the large pools of capital
from institutional public investors, retail investors and private equity that are seeking
returns higher than the low single digit bond yields currently available. Private equity
alone has hundreds of billions in investable funds seeking opportunities in healthcare.
As a result of this abundance of capital chasing deals, there is a premium attached to the
scarcity of available companies with proven business models and strong growth
prospects.


Valuations of companies that rely on Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement have
traditionally been discounted for the risk associated with a change in government
reimbursement policy. This “bop the mole” risk reflects the market’s assessment that
when a particular healthcare sector becomes “too profitable,” the risk increases that CMS
will adjust policy and reimbursement rates in that sector to drive down profitability.


However, there appears to be consensus among both political parties that MA is the right
policy to help manage the rise in overall Medicare costs and, thus, incentives for MA
growth can be expected to continue. This factor combined with strong demographic
growth in the overall senior population means investors apply premiums to companies in
the MA space compared to traditional providers.


Large pools of available capital, scarcity value, lower perceived sector risk and overall
growth in the senior population are all factors that drive higher valuations for the MA
disrupters. However, these factors pale in comparison the underlying economic driver
for these companies. Taking full risk for MA enrollees and dramatically reducing hospital
utilization, while improving health status, is core to their business model. These
companies target and often achieve reduced hospital utilization by 30% or more for their
assigned MA enrollees.

In 2019, the average Medicare days per 1,000 in the U.S. was 1,190. With about
$14,700 per Medicare discharge and a 4.5 ALOS, the average cost per Medicare day is
approximately $3,200. At the U.S. average 1,190 Medicare hospital days per thousand,
if MA hospital utilization is decreased by 25%, the net hospital revenue per 1,000 MA

enrollees is reduced by about $960,000. If one of the MA disrupters has, for example, 50,000 MA lives in a market, the
decrease in hospital revenues for that MA population would be about $48 million. This does not include the associated
physician fees and other costs in the care continuum. That same $48 million + in the coffers of the risk-taking MA
disrupters allows them deliver comprehensive array of supportive services including addressing social determinants of health. These services then further reduce utilization and improves overall health status, creating a virtuous circle. This is very profitable.


MA is only the beginning. When successful MA businesses expand beyond MA, and they will, disruption across the
healthcare economy will be profound and painful for the incumbents. The market is rationally exuberant about that
prospect.

Private equity acquisitions targeted large, high-margin hospitals over 15-year period

Posted on by • Posted in For-Profit, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Market Consolidation, Market Power, Merger Conditions, Mergers & Acquisitions, Operating Expense Reduction, Operating Expenses, Operating Income, Operating Margin, Operating Metrics, Operating Performance, Operating Revenue, Outcomes, Private Equity, Profit Margin, Profit Model, Profit Motive • Leave a comment
https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/finance/private-equity-acquisitions-targeted-large-high-margin-hospitals-from-2003-2017?mkt_tok=Mjk0LU1RRi0wNTYAAAF84S0lHzEXGnckbTB1AZg98zJKSqY3Tst0jl3dy3kW9-vHMqEJSO3frP9s139zQilxN9rnsV8zxfR5m7WFXNeZPGHWiIt2pkE2PNW0GRwV_DrO9XI&mrkid=959610
Private-Equity Cash Piles Up as Takeover Targets Get Pricier - WSJ

From 2003 to 2017, private equity firms focused their acquisition crosshairs on larger hospitals with higher operating margins and greater patient charge-to-cost ratios, according to a new review of healthcare investments published in Health Affairs.

These private equity (PE)-owned hospitals also saw greater increases to their operating margins and charge-to-cost ratios over the course of the 15-year study period than their non-PE-owned counterparts.

Combined with a decrease in all-personnel staffing ratios, the study’s researchers said these data make a case for further investigation into how PE investment may be influencing operational decisions to boost profits and secure favorable exits.

“[Short-term acute care] hospitals’ large size, stable cashflow environment and prevalence of valuable fixed assets (that is, properties) make them highly desirable targets for acquisition,” researchers wrote in Health Affairs. “Broadly speaking, PE acquisition of hospitals invites questions about the alignment of the financial incentives necessary to achieve high-quality clinical outcomes.”

To inform that discussion, the researchers reviewed PE deal data collected by Pitchbook, CB Insights and Zephyr. They also collected information on hospital characteristics and financials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Healthcare Provider Cost Reporting Information System database and the American Hospital Association’s Annual Survey.

Their efforts yielded 42 PE acquisitions involving 282 different hospitals during the 15-year time period. These deals were most frequent among hospitals in Mid-Atlantic and Southern states.

Of note, 161 of the acquired hospitals were tied to a single deal: Bain Capital, Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity’s roughly $33 billion (more than $21 billion cash, $11.7 billion debt) acquisition of HCA Healthcare in 2007.

The study outlined differences between the PE-acquired hospitals and others that were not acquired before any of the deals (in 2003) and after (in 2017).

Nearly three-quarters of hospitals acquired by PE were for-profit in 2003, versus about a quarter of those that were not acquired, the researchers wrote. By 2017, those respective proportions had increased to 92.3% and 25.3%.

Acquired hospitals were significantly larger in terms of beds and total discharges both in 2003 and in 2017. In fact, while acquired hospitals increased in size during the 15-year window, other hospitals decreased in beds and discharges by 2017.

Nurse staffing ratios were similar on both ends of the study period for both categories of hospitals. However, all-staff ratios were lower among the soon-to-be-acquired hospitals in 2003 and saw a slight decrease over the years, whereas hospitals that had not been acquired instead recorded an increase over time.

In terms of financials, the researchers reviewed measures including net patient revenue per discharge, total operating expenses per discharge and the percentage of discharges paid out by Medicaid. Differences among these three areas were not significant with the exception of a larger 15-year increase in total operating expenses per discharge among non-PE hospitals.

The primary financial differences between the PE and non-PE hospitals were instead found among the organizations’ percent operating margins and charge-to-cost ratio, the researcher wrote.

In 2003, both measures were higher among the soon-to-be acquired hospitals. By 2017, the percent operating margin and charge-to-cost ratio increased 66.5% and 105% among the PE-acquired hospitals, respectively, versus changes of -3.8% and 54.2% for the non-PE hospitals.

These and the study’s other findings outline the playbook an investor could follow to identify a profitable hospital and increase its margins, the researchers wrote.

“Post-acquisition, these hospitals appeared to continue to boost profits by restraining growth in cost per patient, in part by limiting staffing growth,” they wrote.

The trends affirm findings published in a 2020 JAMA Internal Medicine study, which similarly tied PE acquisition to moderate income and charge-to-cost ratio increases over the same time period, the researchers wrote.

The data also contrast “the prevailing narrative” that PE investors target distressed businesses to extract value for a quick turnaround sale, they wrote. Outside of a few outlier acquisitions, the researchers said that PE’s goal for short-term acute care hospitals appears to be the opposite—operations refinement and further profit improvements among potential top performers.

Still, the differing structure of PE investments warrants questions as to whether these groups are promoting high-quality outcomes alongside their high margins, Anaeze Offodile II, M.D., an assistant professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the study’s lead author, said during an accompanying Health Affairs podcast.

In contrast to the public market, PE investments often lean on leveraged buyouts that are higher risk and higher reward, he said. Partners are targeting a three-to-seven-year exit window for their investments and often need to hit 20% to 30% annualized returns.

More investigation is needed to determine whether these economic incentives come in tandem with better care or are instead hindering patient outcomes, he said.

“The question becomes ‘Are there unintended consequences or tradeoffs invited due to pursuit of profitability?’” Offodile said during the podcast. “I think someone could make the same argument that if there is a value enhancement strategy by PE firms, then it behooves them to actually raise the level of care delivery up because that enhances the value and engineers a better sale.

“In seeing that sort of exploratory result and how it challenged the prevailing narrative, we’re glad that we took this sort of [setting the] stage approach, and I look [forward] to seeing what we find—which we’re doing now—with respect to quality, spending, access domains,” he said.

Risking lives in pursuit of profits

Posted on by • Posted in Nursing Home, Outcomes, Oversight, Private Equity, Profit Margin, Profit Model, Profit Motive, Regulation, Return on Investment, Shareholder Primacy, Staffing Issues • Leave a comment

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Benefit of Private Equity in Healthcare? Lessons from Nursing Homes

Finding a good long-term care facility for a loved one has always been a difficult process. A new National Bureau of Economic Research working paper suggests that families should also be paying attention to who owns the facility, finding a significant increase in mortality in nursing homes owned by private equity investors.

Examining Medicare data from over 18,000 nursing homes, 1,674 of which were owned by private equity (PE) firms, researchers found that PE ownership increased Medicare patient mortality by 10 percent—translating to a possible 20,150 additional lives lost. PE-owned facilities were also 11 percent more expensive.

Counterintuitively, lower-acuity patients had the greatest increase in mortality. Researchers found staffing decreased by 1.4 percent in PE-owned facilities, suggesting that shorter-staffed facilities may be forced to shift attention to sicker patients, leading to greater adverse effects on patients requiring less care.

Antipsychotic use, which carries a higher risk in the elderly, was also a whopping 50 percent higher.

Nursing homes are low-margin businesses, with profits of just 1-2 percent per year—and PE ownership did not improve financial performance.

Researchers found private equity profited from three strategies: “monitoring fees” paid to services also owned by the PE firm, lease payments after real estate sales, and tax benefits from increased interest payments, concluding that PE is shifting operating costs away from patient care in order to increase return on investment. Private equity investment in care delivery assets has skyrocketed over the past decade.

This study draws the most direct correlation between PE investment and an adverse impact on patient outcomes that we’ve seen so far, highlighting the need for increased regulatory scrutiny to ensure that patient safety isn’t sacrificed for investor returns.