‘Profits were very good in the first three quarters, but then in the fourth quarter the Revenue found out about them.’
Cartoon – Quarterly Performance
Category Archives: Uncategorized
A warning on hospital mergers: After California allowed big chains to grow, prices
Hospital prices … increased substantially in California during a period of low overall price inflation, low economic growth, and declining demand.— Melnick and Fonkych, USC
Fentanyl: widely used, deadly when abused
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid narcotic about 100 times as potent as morphine, continues to be in the news, as deaths from fentanyl overdose continue to rise and even more potent nonpharmaceutical forms become available on the street. It was the drug in Prince’s body and the cause of his death by overdose. The Centers for Disease Control has issued a health advisory to warn of its dangers, as deaths from synthetic opioids, mainly fentanyl, rose to 5,500 in 2014.
Hospitals Off Track to Hit Value-Based Targets
Fewer than one in four hospitals are scheduled to hit the Obama Administration’s 2018 goal of providing at least half their care through value-based structures, research shows.
Not only are few hospitals scheduled to meet the 2018 value-based goal set by the Department of Health and Human Services, but only 3% meet that goal right now.
Further, only 23% expect to meet it even as late as 2019. The survey of 190 U.S. hospitals was conducted by Health Catalyst, a healthcare data and analytics company.
As Hospital Chains Grow, So Do Their Prices For Care
As health care consolidation accelerates nationwide, a new study shows that hospital prices in two of California’s largest health systems were 25 percent higher than at other hospitals around the state.
4 WAYS TO PRACTICE THE ART OF COMMITMENT
Cartoon – Reading Meeting Minutes
Achieving financial reporting harmony post-M&A
http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/achieving-financial-reporting-harmony-post-m-a.html
M&A continues picking up speed in healthcare, generally producing expected results — planned benefits plus feared fragmentation. Among the many functions that may become at least temporarily stressed is finance.
M&A, for all its advantages, is a disruptor. The amount of disruption is based on such factors as existing infrastructures, maturity of business processes, level of change and enterprise readiness to accept the change. Everything about the conjoining organizations — people, schedules, cultures and systems — is pulled together with an expectation that on the backside the newly formed enterprise will work.
For the finance team, this means dealing with data that lacks common structure, terminology, business process and technology. Finance has the unenviable task of capturing data in its varied quality and formats in a myriad of locations within the formerly separate organizations. Order must be created so that the financial data is fit for consolidation, close and reporting for the new enterprise.
