http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/7-hospital-bankruptcies-so-far-in-2016-july27.html
Tag Archives: Operating Performance
Anthem’s Good, Bad and Ugly News
Anthem had some good headlines on Wednesday. The insurer reported second-quarter earnings and revenue that topped estimates, with the latter jumping 7.2 percent from a year earlier. It expects to insure more people than it initially forecast this year, after surprisingly robust growth in its Medicaid business.
But beneath the good, there was also bad and ugly.
11 recent hospital outlook and credit rating actions
Profit margins at hospitals rise as charity care falls in the St. Louis region
Profit margins at St. Louis area hospitals rose to 4.5 percent in 2014 due to increased emergency room and outpatient visits and steep declines in charity care, according to a new report from the St. Louis Area Business Health Coalition, an organization that represents area employers.
While profits increased, hospitals were less charitable, the organization found. In 2014 area hospitals spent 2.1 percent of their operating revenue on charity care, or free or reduced care for low-income individuals. In the previous year, area hospitals spent 2.93 percent of operating revenue on charity care. That’s a nearly 28 percent decline in charity care in the region, according to Karen Roth, author of the report.
For some health care advocates, a decrease in charity care is problematic because nonprofit hospitals are tax-exempt based on an expectation that they provide free care to those in need. However, the Internal Revenue Service and the state of Missouri do not have any requirements regarding how much charity care a nonprofit hospital must provide.
The rural hospital closure crisis: 15 key findings and trends
CHI to exit health insurance business
http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/chi-to-exit-health-insurance-business.html
CHI ended the first nine months of fiscal 2016 with an operating loss of $265.6 million on revenue of $12.2 billion. In April, S&P and Moody’s Investors Service lowered their ratings on CHI’s debt due to the system’s persistent losses.
Health Affairs Study On Hospital Profitability Gives Us Some Important Factors To Watch Going Forward
Bai and Anderson report two profitability-related factors that reflect the effect of hospital consolidation trends: regional power and system affiliation. Regional power refers to hospitals that face less competition in their local markets, while system affiliation indicates hospitals that are part of multi-hospital systems. Both are associated with higher profitability in their study.
More and more hospitals across the country are joining systems that operate outside their local markets. This is due, in part, to the fact that antitrust regulators have limited local market mergers but have not, in general, adapted their models of hospital market competition and antitrust to address non-local mergers. As a result, hospitals in some instances are able to join systems, gain market power, and raise their prices without necessarily improving quality or service. My own research in this area (forthcoming inINQUIRY) shows that hospitals that are part of the largest multi-hospital systems in California were able to negotiate price increases that are consistently well above all other hospitals in that state.
14 hospitals receive credit downgrades in past month
For Hospitals, Prestige Leads To Profits
These hospitals make the most money off patients — and they’re mostly nonprofits
The authors analyzed Medicare data for about 3,000 acute care hospitals, of which 59 percent were nonprofit, 25 percent were for-profit and 16 percent were public. After adjusting for cost of living and the types of patients served, they found that more than half of all facilities lost money on patient-care services. Rural hospitals, small hospitals and major teaching hospitals tended to lose more money than urban hospitals and larger ones.
HENRY KOTULA 