News Briefs: Year-end spending bill ensures no loss of funding for Medicaid DSH payments
Year-end spending bill ensures no loss of funding for Medicaid DSH payments. The continuing resolution (CR) to keep the federal government funded through mid-March includes key healthcare provisions. Passed Dec. 20 as essentially the last act of the 118th Congress, the CR ensured an $8 billion cut to Medicaid disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments did…
Where do we go now? Action needed to address public dissatisfaction with U.S. healthcare
Healthcare providers are examining their approaches to understanding and responding to mounting discontent, including addressing access, affordability and elimination of friction, as part of their responsibility to get healthcare right.
How healthcare leaders can automate workflows and improve financial performance
1. How do you help healthcare organizations navigate the biggest challenges in healthcare? Sage Intacct allows healthcare finance leaders to eliminate manual processes, automate workflows and improve financial performance across the organization. Sage enables multi-entity healthcare organizations to consolidate hundreds of entities in minutes. Not only does this simplify intercompany accounting, but it can also…
David Johnson: Consumerism introduces itself to U.S. healthcare
Unlike other consumer people-oriented businesses, healthcare essentially operates independently of its end-users (also called patients, consumers and/or customers). Individuals engage providers to diagnose and treat their ailments, while third parties largely pay for any services rendered. This convoluted relationship among providers, patients and payers creates two fundamental anomalies within healthcare business models that distort the…
Hospital financials projected to continue trending upward despite various X-factors
Hospitals are coming off a year of improved stability that should continue even with looming questions and challenges for 2025, according to recent data and insights. As reported in December, Fitch Ratings upgraded the sector outlook (login required) for not-for-profit (NFP) hospitals to neutral/stable after more than two years in which the outlook was categorized…
Texas Health Resources enhances self-scheduling with flexible options
Amid expected growth in demand from patients to schedule their own clinic visits, an Arlington, Texas-based health system learned that in practice some patients want more than just the ability to go online to choose a visit time, date and provider. Officials for Texas Health Resources (THR) found that out while implementing a new self-scheduling…
Regina Herzlinger: Why it is important to champion innovation in healthcare
Regina Herzlinger, Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, emphasizes the importance of education in promoting innovation in healthcare. She highlights the need for healthcare organizations to consider the six exogenous forces of innovation, including competition, financing, technology, accountability, public policy, and consumer ratings. She also stresses the need for healthcare organizations to have a portfolio of revenue and supply sources, and the potential for technology to improve healthcare technology. Additionally, Herzlinger argues that education is crucial for sustaining innovation, particularly in the areas of technology, cost control, and consumer involvement.
Commitment and path required in change management to create a sustainable impact
In 2021, Carilion Clinic, a $2 billion revenue, eight-hospital integrated health system in Roanoke, Va., was facing a problem familiar to many health systems around the country: stubbornly high average length of stay (ALOS) that was hurting Carilion’s efforts to serve its community. The pandemic had exacerbated operational challenges and mitigated the effectiveness of previous…
Jeff Goldsmith: ‘Hospital mergers kill’: A case study in reality distortion
Last summer, The Wall Street Journal published an article reporting on a study by academic economists at Yale and the University of Chicago that reviewed the impact of hospital mergers.a The study’s authors argued that hospital mergers triggered a wave of layoffs by employers in surrounding communities. That finding caught my interest, so I read…
As data show a spike in spending on hospital services, new report lays out savings options
Accelerating hospital-focused expenditures helped spur a 2023 increase in national health spending, according to newly released data. Spending on hospital services surged by 10.4% for the year, up from a 3.2% increase in 2022 and 3.4% for the three-year period spanning 2020-22. The 2023 increase was the biggest seen since a 10.8% jump in 1990.…