Cost Effectiveness of Health Report, September 2021

Welcome to this inaugural issue of HFMA’s Cost-Effectiveness of Health Report, sponsored by Kaufman Hall. This monthly e-newsletter will explore ways to ensure healthcare delivery in the United States is not only financially sustainable but also cost effective for all of its stakeholders — including health systems, physicians, health plans and patients. In this issue, healthcare futurist Jeff Goldsmith shares his perspectives on the need for a focus on improving cost effectiveness of health as a societal imperative.

The future of U.S. healthcare

U.S. healthcare providers have a social obligation to promote cost-effectiveness of health
By Eric C. Reese, PhD
Achieving cost effectiveness of health in the United States is a task that is not limited to healthcare providers – or only to the stakeholders within our nation’s healthcare system, for that matter. It’s a societal challenge, says Jeff Goldsmith, PhD, president of Health Futures Inc. But hospitals and health systems still have an important role to play in meeting that challenge.

Note from the editor

Why cost-effectiveness of health should be the prime point of focus for healthcare
By Eric C. Reese
One of the goals of this newsletter is to help define this concept and all of its attributes and show why it should be a beacon for the healthcare industry. Here, we provide a quick outline of the premises that will nform this effort.

Payment trends

Responding to the risk of site-neutral payments
Sponsored by Kaufman Hall
By Dawn Samaris and James Kinn
As the likelihood of site-neutral payments increases over a range of services, hospitals and health systems must understand which services are most at risk from these changes and determine how quickly they will respond.

Home-based healthcare

Home-based care is ripe for innovation and implementation post COVID-19
By Bonnie B. Blanchfield, CPA ScD, Lindsay E. Jubelt, MD, and Gregg S. Meyer, MD, MSc
Despite the havoc the COVID-19 pandemic created for hospitals, it also created an opportunity for many important lessons learned on how care can be delivered more efficiently and cost effectively in patients’ homes.

Mergers and acquisitions

Key success factors and lessons learned from a timely health system merger
By Josh Hesley, MHA, and Deborah Bloomfield, PhD, CPA, and Joshua Ackman
Two large Catholic health systems — Bons Secours Health System and Mercy Health — initiated a merger in 2018 as a strategy for delivering more cost-effective care to underserved communities amid continued cost pressures and declining payments. Within three years, by using proactive, strategic and transparent communication as the guiding principle for their merger of equals, the combined organizations were able to far surpass the financial and integration goals they had set for the consolidation.