Tag Archives: Hospital

Moody’s changes Geisinger Health System’s outlook to negative

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , • Leave a comment

http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/moody-s-changes-geisinger-health-system-s-outlook-to-negative.html

Image result for geisinger health system

Moody’s Investors Service revised Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger Health System’s outlook to negative from stable.

The outlook revision is based on a number of financial and strategic challenges, including an operating loss related to Geisinger’s health plan’s exchange product.

Moody’s Investors Service also affirmed the “Aa2” and “Aa2/VMIG 1” ratings on Geisinger’s outstanding bonds. The rating affirmations are based on Geisinger’s large size, leading market position and exceptional clinical reputation.

CHI records $483M operating loss as labor costs grow, patient volume declines

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , • Leave a comment

http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/chi-records-483m-operating-loss-as-labor-costs-grow-patient-volume-declines.html

Image result for operating losses

Catholic Health Initiatives, a nonprofit 103-hospital system based in Englewood, Colo., recorded an operating loss of $483.3 million in fiscal year 2016, compared to an operating surplus of $23.9 million in the year prior.

CHI reported revenue of $15.9 billion in FY 2016, up 7.4 percent from $14.8 billion in FY 2015.

However, rising expenses offset the system’s revenue gains. CHI said expenses increased 10.2 percent year over year to $16.1 billion in FY 2016.

“Lower patient volumes, higher labor costs, increased pharmacy prices and reduced reimbursement in Medicare and Medicaid all contributed to CHI’s financial performance in the 2016 fiscal year,” the system said in a written statement.

CHI ended FY 2016 with a net loss of $703.2 million, compared to a net gain of $113.6 million in FY 2015.

CHI officials expect financial performance to improve in FY 2017. “CHI is focused on several key areas for increased efficiency and expense reduction — including labor, supply chain, administrative overhead, revenue cycle and pharmacy services,” the system said. “We are confident these efforts will yield substantial improvement in overall operating and financial performance as we progress through the current fiscal year.”

Healthcare predictive analytics market should hit $19.5 billion by 2025, research shows

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , • Leave a comment

http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/healthcare-predictive-analytics-market-should-hit-195-billion-2025-research-shows

The market for healthcare predictive analytics should hit $19.5 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research.

This is largely due to government authorities, health organizations and private players who are striving to decrease healthcare expenditures. Predictive analytics can help bend the cost curve by optimizing an organization’s existing clinical workflow, operations and payment strategies.

The data that feeds this trend is flowing freely. With the advent of the internet of things in healthcare and wearable technology, people are more closely tracking their health by the numbers, generating a huge amount of patient data on things like diet habits, physiological parameters and vital signs. Predictive modeling based on this data helps in understanding disease patterns, as well as key therapy trends and outcomes.

Staffing shortages top list of C-suite concerns in economic outlook, Premier says

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , • Leave a comment

http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/staffing-shortages-top-list-c-suite-concerns-economic-outlook-premier-says?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTkdVeVpUQm1ORFZtTkdZMCIsInQiOiJYXC9IMjFnTXJUeTVOTFFlalVtcVRlT0E1MjAzSnZ4SERvVEpyZ1lFaEVYcGxHTnpnMVI2Z2FId2RKWDdnZFZMXC9hK2crTDlIWnY2WStzeGVsTmtnMEFJR2hvd1wvYVl3dDVNb29wOGRBdlNmND0ifQ%3D%3D

Staffing shortages are top of mind for C-suite executives, with 41 percent of those surveyed for the Fall 2016 Premier Inc Economic Outlook calling it their biggest concern and the issue that will have the biggest impact on their system’s ability to deliver care.

That figure shot up 42 percent from the Spring 2016 outlook, results show. Health reform also topped worries, with 24 percent saying that would impact them most, followed by innovations in population health. Other concerns included drug shortages and emerging technology.

The survey polled healthcare executives on the biggest issues facing their supply chains and health systems as a whole. The most recent survey represents 52 health system C-suite executives across the United States.

Key findings also show workforce worries in other areas. The study found 72 percent of executives surveyed said they think the current supply of primary care physicians will not meet their needs over the next three years, and 51 percent don’t have enough nurse practitioners, physicians and other healthcare extenders.

What’s eating up cardiovascular service line margins: My ‘top 5’ list

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , • Leave a comment

http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/what-s-eating-up-cardiovascular-service-line-margins-my-top-5-list.html

Image result for cardiovascular

Supplier marketing tactics continue to artificially prop up physician and patient demand for high-end products, including some with unintended negative consequences from both a financial and quality standpoint. This has been the situation for decades, but is fast becoming an untenable situation for hospitals—especially those that have failed to calculate the true cost of ownership.

I recently unearthed a reference sheet I penned in 2003, when drug-eluting stents first hit the market, offering steps healthcare providers could take to prepare for the financial impact of the then-new technology. It could just as easily been written about bioresorbable stents now taking hospital finances by storm. My suggestions, in short:

• Do a deep-dive analysis of how supplies are currently being utilized for stent procedures
• Determine the expense of treating patients impacted by the new stent (based on conversion estimates)
• Share the results with your finance team and negotiate carve-outs with payers
• Perform a supply expense projection
• Share the analysis with your physicians
• Combine intelligence gained from physician discussions with expense projection to estimate proportion of patients who will receive the new stent
• Share projections with hospital board of directors
• Develop and implement guidelines for use with medical staff, based on approved uses and clinical studies

But planning for the impact and actually limiting it are two different things entirely. The challenges in preserving cardiovascular service line margins have barely budged over the years, even as the consequences of inaction have grown exponentially. Year after year, a handful of high-end products make headlines with the only certainty being that costs will ramp up 5 to 10 percent. Below are what I see as the five perennial culprits.

California healthcare advocates rally against Trump

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article116320043.html

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on Wednesday, July 27, 2016.

They backed Obamacare, and they’re not letting it go without a fight.

The federal healthcare overhaul could be one of the first casualties of President-Elect Donald Trump, who has joined the Republicans controlling Congress in vowing to dismantle the law. Since winning the presidency Trump has softened his stance somewhat, speaking favorably about popular provisions that prohibit insurers from turning away people with pre-existing conditions and allow people to stay on their parents’ plans until they turn 26.

Still, Trump’s election has California healthcare advocates on high alert, not to mention the state’s new U.S. senator. California could forfeit billions of federal dollars that support Medi-Cal, the insurance program for poor Californians, and subsidize private insurance purchases. They’re worried about the fate of Medicare, a program that Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, said has “serious problems because of Obamacare” and is “going broke.”

 A rally today in Los Angeles offers the latest example of a policy rift between California and Washington, D.C., with elected officials joining healthcare workers and patients for an event billed as a push to “protect our health care.” Among the expected speakers are Senate Health Committee chair Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, Los Angeles County Health Agency Director Mitch Katz, and California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, whose public denunciations of Trump have become a recurring feature.

BY THE NUMBERS: 13.6 million is the number of Californians enrolled in Medi-Cal as of June 2016, the most recent data available, a net increase of about 800,000 from a year earlier and about double Medi-Cal enrollment a decade ago. The total includes almost 3.4 million people who became eligible for Medi-Cal under the state’s optional Obamacare expansion. The Legislative Analyst’s Office last week reported that Medi-Cal caseload should grow by about 100,000 annually through mid-2021 among families, children and people covered by ACA expansion. Enrollment among senior citizens and people with disabilities will grow by an estimated 50,000.

California Braces For Medi-Cal’s Future Under Trump And The GOP

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

California Braces For Medi-Cal’s Future Under Trump And The GOP

Dollar CutDollar Cut

California grabbed the first opportunity to expand Medicaid and ran with it, helping cut the number of uninsured people in half in a few short years.

Thanks in part to billions of dollars in federal funding, a third of California’s residents — including half its children — are insured by Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid.

Now, with the election of Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress, the state that bet so heavily on the Medicaid expansion is bracing to see how much of its work will be undone. While no one knows yet exactly what will happen, many policymakers and advocates fear the federal government will end or severely limit funding for the expansion.

“There are no easy cuts in Medi-Cal,” said Stan Rosenstein, a former Medi-Cal administrator. Reduced federal funding “could have a major impact on the uninsurance rate, on the viability of our hospitals, and it could have a very negative impact on the economy.”

Medi-Cal cuts could restrict who is eligible for coverage, slash health care benefits, limit access to doctors and reduce payment rates to medical providers — already among the lowest in the nation, health policy experts and advocates said. Medi-Cal covers a host of services for low-income residents, including maternity care, prescription drugs, long-term care services, mental health treatment and hospital stays.

Laurel Lucia, a health care program manager at the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center, said a well-funded Medicaid program benefits everyone, not just those currently on the program.

“A lot of people are just a layoff away from needing Medicaid,” she said. “The Republican plans for Medicaid threaten to undermine that safety net.”

Why Some States Declined to Expand Medicaid

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , • Leave a comment

http://www.definitivehc.com/medicare-cms/why-some-states-declined-to-expand-medicaid?source=newsltr-blog&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=11-22-16

Image result for Why Some States Declined to Expand Medicaid

The vast majority of healthcare organizations and professional groups support Medicaid expansion, the Obamacare initiative to widen eligibility for Medicaid to individuals earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level. To them, the benefits of expansion, such as less bad debt and uncollectible bills, better patient access to services, and an overall healthier patient population, outweigh the additional costs for states to bear after the full federal reimbursement period expires. But a subsequent Supreme Court ruling left the decision to implement Medicaid expansion up to the individual states. To date, 31 states and DC have implemented the expansion, the majority of them launching new Medicaid eligibility guidelines starting in 2014. Why hasn’t it been approved in the other 19? Often it is attributed to the state’s dominant political party, but that alone isn’t a reliable indicator, given that red states like Ohio and North Dakota expanded the program, while others like Maine and Virginia did not. Judging from a review of Definitive Healthcare data, there is another possibility: hospitals in non-expansion states were in a better financial position and so there was less political pressure to widen Medicaid eligibility.

Northwell releases 37-point rescue plan for Brooklyn hospitals

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , • Leave a comment

http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/northwell-releases-37-point-rescue-plan-for-brooklyn-hospitals.html

Image result for rescue

Northwell Ventures, the consulting division of Great Neck, N.Y.-based Northwell Health, recently released a report that includes a rescue plan for Brooklyn’s distressed community hospitals.

In 2015, the State of New York allocated $700 million to overhaul the healthcare delivery system in Brooklyn, N.Y. In early 2016, the state awarded a grant to Northwell Ventures to prepare a feasibility and sustainability study to identify ways to improve the quality of healthcare in central and northeastern Brooklyn.

Northwell’s recently released report primarily focuses on four financially troubled hospitals in Brooklyn: Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, Interfaith Medical Center, Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center and Wyckoff Heights Medical Center. In fiscal year 2017, the four hospitals will require more than $300 million in state operating assistance to remain open, according to the report.

The 165-page study includes 37 recommendations for the Brooklyn hospitals. Under the plan, the four hospitals would join together to form a new regional health system with a single board. “The market and financial forces confronting these hospitals make it virtually impossible for them to succeed as stand-alone hospitals,” the study reads.

The study also recommends Kingsbrook scale back by consolidating its inpatient services with the Brookdale campus, and moving its behavioral health beds to Interfaith. “From the standpoint of availability of services, it should be noted that Kingsbrook would maintain an emergency department and serve as a location for ambulatory care programs,” the study reads.

In addition to the clinical restructuring of services, the study also includes recommendations to address facility infrastructure deficiencies, develop an expanded ambulatory care network and deploy an enterprise-wide health IT platform.

Nixed Hershey-PinnacleHealth marriage could send them into arms of someone else

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

http://www.pennlive.com/news/2016/11/nixed_hershey-pinnaclehealth_m.html

PinnacleHealth System and Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center said a marriage made sense for many reasons.

Not the least of which was to gain size and strength needed to fend off megasystems from outside their traditional service area. Those systems, they said, are positioning to siphon away patients needing the most advanced care, thereby eroding revenues needed to support those services in Harrisburg-area counties.

But the Federal Trade Commission opposed the merger on the grounds it would create a local hospital monopoly, and Hershey and Pinnacle subsequently called off their engagement.

 Still, experts say the forces that pulled the one-time rivals together are real and won’t go away. Those forces have triggered a wave of health system consolidation all over the country. In the Harrisburg region, they have prompted players such as Geisinger Health System, WellSpan Health and the newly-merged Lancaster General Health-University of Pennsylvania Health System to eye the territory traditionally served by Pinnacle and Hershey.

Those systems now surround Pinnacle and Hershey. At the same time, health care has entered an era where health systems are forever trying to attract more patients. That often requires expanding their footprint.

“It’s going to be hard for them to maintain what they’re doing as stand-alones,” said David Sarcone, an associate professor of business management and health studies at Dickinson College.

Stephen Foreman, an associate professor of health care administration at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh said, “I can’t say I think their positions are all that great right now.”