Category Archives: Urgent Care

Half of insured adults are skipping primary care visits. Cost a major reason why

Posted on by • Posted in Health Insurance Benefit Design, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, High Deductible Health Plans, Out of Pocket Expenses, Primary Care, Quality of Care, Urgent Care • Leave a comment

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/half-of-insured-adults-are-skipping-primary-care-visits-cost-a-major-reason-why.html?utm_medium=email

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In a given year by 2016, almost 50 percent of adults with commercial insurance hadn’t visited a primary care physician, according to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

For the study, researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine wanted to better characterize primary care declines among adults. To do so, the study authors analyzed deidentified claims data from a national private insurer that covers roughly 20 million members each year, according to NPR.

They found from 2008-16, adult visits to primary care physicians fell by nearly 25 percent. The decline was largest among younger adults. The proportion of adults with no visits to primary care physicians in a given year climbed from 38.1 percent to 46.4 percent within the same period.

While the number of preventive checkups rose — likely because the ACA made the appointments cost-free — problem-based visits, such as going to a primary care physician for sickness or injury, declined more than 30 percent, according to NPR.

Problem-based visits saw out-of-pocket costs increase 31.5 percent during the study period, which could have affected the decline, according to researchers. Additionally, visits to alternative sites like urgent care clinics grew by 46.9 percent in the study period.

“Our results suggest that this decline may be explained by decreased real or perceived visit needs, financial deterrents, and use of alternative sources of care,” the study authors concluded. 

 

 

 

U of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics CEO: ‘Everything in healthcare doesn’t need to be done by a hospital CEO’

Posted on by • Posted in Board, CEO, Connected Care, Health System, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Maternal Care, Mental Health, Retail Healthcare, Strategic Leadership, Strategy, Team-Based Care, Urgent Care, Womens Health • Leave a comment

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-management-administration/u-of-iowa-hospitals-clinics-ceo-everything-in-healthcare-doesn-t-need-to-be-done-by-a-hospital-ceo.html

Despite branching out through nearly 60 outpatient clinics, the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics in Iowa City — which includes the only comprehensive university medical center in the state — by and large remains a healthcare destination.

As such, demand for inpatient services hasn’t waned, but has kept on par with the surge in outpatient demand that the entire industry is seeing, Suresh Gunasekaran, the CEO of University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics and associate vice president for the University of Iowa Health Care, told Becker’s Hospital Review.

That’s not to say strategic threats don’t exist. The biggest ones threatening the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics are retail medicine providers that cherry-pick services but aren’t able to provide coordinated care, Mr. Gunasekaran said.

“It’s great that today there’s more convenient care being provided by retail providers. The biggest threat, though, is if healthcare consumers start believing that getting disconnected care is worth it,” he said. “We’re in the business of connected care.”

Tackling this challenge will require input from all parties, not just the hospital CEO, he said. Here, Mr. Gunasekaran expands on how University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics is facing the threat of uncoordinated retail medicine, and answers questions on board oversight and the changing role of the hospital CEO.

 

Question: What do you consider your biggest strategic threat?

Suresh Gunasekaran: Major threats are those healthcare services that don’t believe in team-based care, that focus on cherry-picking a corridor of healthcare without thinking about the health of the whole person.

There’s unmet demand in communities for [accessible healthcare]. If Walmart is willing to offer a clinic, they may be the only clinic for 20 miles. What I’d hope is these kinds of Walmart and CVS providers look at how they partner with players like us. In that sense, we don’t view retail medicine as a threat as much as an opportunity. But when they’re not collaborative, that’s a threat to us. It’s only good if the care is coordinated.

Q: U of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics has its own retail clinics. How do they play into the larger consumerism trend healthcare is seeing?

SG: We’re in our fifth year of offering retail urgent care clinics. We offer a setting that’s lower cost and very competitive with other retail clinics. We’ve seen a lot of uptake and growth within this model, but it’s our ability to say: Hey, urgent care and retail healthcare absolutely have a place, but they need to be connected to our lab in radiology and to our specialists.

The next frontier for us is how to partner with other retail clinics. It’s easy to partner with yourself, but it’s more challenging to make it work with others.

Q: U of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics is a state agency, so your board is really the board of regents of the state of Iowa. Have you faced increased pressure from the board to take up any initiatives?

SG: The board of regents has asked we keep a couple issues front and center. There continues to be inadequate maternal healthcare resources for the young moms of Iowa, with more and more hospitals unable to recruit staff to deliver babies. Data shows maternal death is increasing in Iowa, which is a very, very troubling statistic. So we are bringing the full strength of the University of Iowa together on this. We just got a huge research grant from the federal government to create better models for maternal health across the state.

Mental health is another area, and a huge area of priority for our governor. We are looking at expanding our residency program to rural areas that are underserved for mental health. Other things we’re looking at is the workforce shortage and social determinants of health.

Q: How do you think the CEO role will evolve over the next decade? Will we see more hospital CEOs take stances on bigger public issues?

SG: Hospitals within the healthcare industry have [historically] been very insular. You almost could run your business without worrying about the rest of the system. Now with healthcare reform and greater governmental and employer scrutiny of healthcare costs, folks are asking hospital systems to answer for what’s going on in a broader industry. And of course, CEOs have to embrace that journey.

Are we going to get involved in those multiple different steps? Not just access to care, not just the pricing of care, not just care coordination, not just how to get the community to get engaged in their own health. The CEO of the future has to have a stance on all of these, because it’s impossible to go where we need to go without being involved.

Perhaps the CEO is not that important. At the end of the day when you look at these issues, it’s important that we’re at the table, but the community needs to come first. It’s an opportunity for employers to take the lead. It’s an opportunity for the government to take a lead. Everything in healthcare doesn’t need to be done by a hospital CEO, and in the future, probably isn’t best done by a hospital CEO. We need to be one part of the team.

Q: You’ve been leading the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics for a little over a year now. Is there any piece of advice you would go back and give yourself on day one?

SG: Never lose the voice of the patient. I got that at the end of my first year, and I think that beginning with the voice of the patient would’ve been very, very powerful. It’s somewhat impractical that you show up to a new job, and of course, you’re going to meet the people within your organization first. But never forgetting the voice of the patient and being able to hear who you are in their eyes and in their words would have been very powerful [on day one]. But I’m making up for lost time.

 

‘An Arm and a Leg’: How much for stitches in the ER? Hard to gauge upfront

Posted on by • Posted in Emergency Care, Health Policy, Price Transparency, Primary Care, Urgent Care • Leave a comment

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20191205/e28098An-Arm-and-a-Lege28099-How-much-for-stitches-in-the-ER-Hard-to-gauge-upfront.aspx

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Sarah Macsalka had heard the stories about how expensive an emergency room visit can be, even for a minor complaint.

http://aca.st/b26519

So when her 7-year-old son, Cameron, tripped and gashed his knee in the backyard, the ER was not where her family headed first. In fact, Macsalka did just about everything she could to avoid paying a big, fat bill to get Cameron’s knee stitched up.

Ultimately, she failed.

Her adventure raises a big question: In a system where consumers are encouraged to “shop” for the best deal in health care, why is it so hard to get simple information, like a price?

On this week’s episode of “An Arm and a Leg,” we get some answers.

Instead of taking her son to the local emergency room for stitches, Macsalka took him to an urgent care clinic, one that provides patients with prices ahead of the service. There, the staff said stitching up Cameron’s knee would cost $150.

But there was a problem. The clinic didn’t have the topical anesthetic the doctor would need to numb Cameron’s skin first.

“And Cameron is like screaming and crying,” Macsalka said. “He doesn’t take pain well.”

So, reluctantly, the family headed to the local emergency room.

Macsalka tried to be a smart shopper there, too. When a staff member came to take her insurance information, Macsalka grilled him about how much the visit would cost.

“He was like, ‘I don’t know. Just walking through the ER [door] costs $600,'” she said.

To Macsalka, that sounded like a “facility fee” — a cover charge of sorts, separate from any health care services. And it sounded pricey. But she was over a barrel.

“The kid is still screaming and crying,” she said. “His knee’s a mess.” She wasn’t about to drive him back to the urgent care place and start over again.

They got the stitches in the ER. And, as it happened, the anesthetic wasn’t very effective.

Macsalka said her son’s screams were ear-piercing. “Yeah, Cameron’s lungs did not give out,” she said. “Those are very healthy lungs.”

As it turned out, Macsalka’s attempts to figure out what the final price would be weren’t very effective either.  A few weeks after the ER visit, she got a bill for the doctor’s services and paid it: $214 after insurance.

Then there was another bill from the hospital. One line: $2,824.

Macsalka went back into smart-consumer mode. She called the hospital billing department and asked if there had been a mistake.

Macsalka said the person she spoke with on the phone told her that “just walking through the doors” of the emergency room cost $4,200. That amount matches a number on her insurance statement — an amount before the insurance company’s negotiated discount.

After that discount, the bill was $2,824 – and because Macsalka’s family had a high deductible, they were responsible for paying it all.

Macsalka said she tried another tactic and asked the billing representative: What if I didn’t have insurance? She said the billing rep told her: In that case, the hospital would accept 10% of its total bill to make sure it collected something. Without a negotiated rate from insurance, the total would have been about $6,000, so 10% would have been about $600.

It was more than Macsalka had hoped to pay. But less than $3,000.

“So I was like, ‘Fine, cool, I’ll take it.’ And she’s like, ‘Oh no. You can’t because it’s already gone through your insurance company. So that’s not an option for you.'”

Having insurance — with a high deductible — meant Macsalka was on the hook for the $2,800 charge.

She wishes someone could have told her the price upfront.

“I would’ve said thank you very much. And walked out and gone back to our lovely urgent care and been like, Cameron, bite on this stick,” she said.

For Episode 4, we also rounded up a hospital consultant and a journalist to better understand the perspectives of the hospital and insurance company.

 

Out-of-pocket costs rising even as patients transition to lower-cost care settings

Posted on by • Posted in 2020 Election Issues, Consumerism, Denial Rates, Emergency Care, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, Health Policy, Health System, Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA), High Deductible Health Plans, High Drug Prices, High Prices, Highly Specialized Drugs, Hospital, Hospital Industry, Out of Pocket Expenses, Primary Care, Rev Cycle Management, Urgent Care • Leave a comment

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Patients saw increases of up to 12% in their out-of-pocket responsibilities for inpatient, outpatient and ED care in 2018.

A new TransUnion Healthcare analysis has found that most patients likely felt a bigger pinch to their wallets as out-of-pocket costs across all settings of care increased in 2018. The new findings were made public yesterday at the 2019 Healthcare Financial Management Association Annual Conference in Orlando.

The analysis reveals that patients experienced annual increases of up to 12% in their out-of-pocket responsibilities for inpatient, outpatient and emergency department care last year.

In 2017, the average inpatient cost was $4,068; the average outpatient cost was $990; and the average emergency department cost was $577.

In 2018, the average inpatient cost was $4,659; the average outpatient cost was $1,109; and the average emergency department cost was $617.

FUELING THE TREND

There are certain factors that are influencing this trend, according to Jonathan Wiik, principal of healthcare strategy at TransUnion Healthcare.

“Patients are becoming more aware that emergency care is expensive and somewhat inefficient,” Wiik said. “No one wants to go to the emergency room unless we have to, because we don’t want to deal with the time there or the expense. They aren’t the best place to get primary or even urgent care.”

Another factor, he said, is that providers realize the emergency department is a care setting of last resort for many. Providers want to make sure that have room in the ED for cases that are real emergencies, so they’re essentially curating their patients, steering patients to the most cost effective settings possible — often primary care, which is the least expensive setting.

Noting that the biggest annual increases were in inpatient and outpatient care, Wiik said that was largely a function of utilization and just a general wariness, in addition to the fact that most EDs have pretty flat contracts. Financial communication with patients is also an issue.

“Most people can’t afford the average out-of-pocket, so providers are really trying to educate patients as early as they can about those costs,” said Wiik. “Emergency care is a really hard place to educate people on finances, let alone collect on them.”

RISING COSTS

The analysis found that, during a hospital visit, patients are likely experiencing cost increases that continue the trend of higher out-of-pocket costs. About 59% of patients in 2018 had an average out-of-pocket expense between $501 and $1,000 during a healthcare visit. This was a dramatic increase from 39% in 2017. Conversely, the number of patients that had an average out- of-pocket expense of $500 or below decreased from 49% in 2017 to 36% in 2018.

And with out-of-pocket costs increasing, the trend toward consumerism is growing as more patients, payers and providers transition to lower cost settings of care.

One example: Inpatient care, traditionally the most expensive healthcare option, has seen a leveling off with the percentage of price estimates remaining at 8% between 2017 and 2018. The percentage of outpatient services estimates, generally about one-quarter of the cost of inpatient services, rose in that same timeframe from 65% to 73%.

“Patients are likely seeing more providers and payers recommending that they take advantage of cost-effective healthcare options, which brings down costs for all parties,” said Wiik. “This is especially important as costs continue to rise in all areas of healthcare, particularly in inpatient, outpatient and emergency department services.”

This is having an impact on providers, payers and patients, he said.

“Let’s pretend Joanna had an MRI in her head, and that ran $3,200. That might have been paid by Blue Cross Blue Shield, and $100 out of Joanna’s pocket. Now Joanna’s paying $300. Most patients don’t look up how much the MRI’s going to be. They just get the bill later and try to figure it out. I think the patient portion of the bill is going to be in the 35, 40% range very soon. What that means is we’re quickly approaching half of the bill coming from the patient and half from the payer. That’s not insurance anymore, that’s a bank account.”

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study indicated that 34% of patients are finding it difficult to pay their deductible before insurance kicks in. In addition to patients being challenged to make payments, the trend is that providers are also feeling the pressure of increased denial rates and write-offs, which is increasing bad debt.

Considering these factors together — increased out-of-pocket expenses, a patient’s challenge to make payment, and increased denial rates — collecting payments from all payers is critical for providers. In order for providers to ensure they receive payment for the patient-care services rendered, it is vital that they implement strategies that maximize reimbursements.