Financial Sustainability Report: January 2021

The January Financial Sustainability Report, sponsored by Kaufman Hall, examines the recent expanded interest in hospital-at-home programs, and their potential benefits. It also includes insights on the critical impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on people already adversely affected by social determinants, and on the need to address administrative waste in the healthcare caused by onerous prior authorization processes.

Population Health

Have hospital-at-home programs finally come of age?
By M. Orry Jacobs and Bill Eggbeer
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly accelerated interest in developing and expanding hospital-at-home programs. For healthcare organizations that are pursuing risk-based contracting with an APM, a hospital-at-home program offers the potential to improve care and reduce costs for a segment of the patient population.

Healthcare Reform

Commentary
Front-line stories: How prior authorization processes are leading to administrative waste for providers
By Alan S. Kaplan, MD, FACPE, FACHE, and Abigail Abongwa, CRCR
As hospitals continue to struggle with razor-thin margins, they should actively identify activities that create financial burdens for them without delivering value to patients. One health system’s stories of administrative waste due to prior authorization processes show why this activity should be be high on their list.

SDOH

COVID-19 magnifies impact of SDOH on U.S. healthcare system
By Eric C. Reese, PhD
Population health management expert Jenifer Leaf Jaeger, MD, MPH, examines why the COVID-19 pandemic has made it more critical than ever for the U.S. providers to address the needs of people whose health and well-being are compromised by social determinants of health.

Real Estate Strategy

Real strategy for healthcare real estate
Sponsored by Kaufman Hall
By Matt Robbins and Lauren Clementi
Hospital and health system leaders should devote the same level of strategic focus and analytical rigor to their organizations’ real estate as they apply elsewhere within the enterprise.

Policy

Commentary
‘Bidencare’: What’s achievable?  
By Ken Perez
The new Biden administration could achieve either of two scenarios in the realm of health policy: One would involve bold changes to health policy, whereas the other, which is more likely, would involve less-ambitious reforms that can garner bipartisan support.

COVID-19

Hospitals in the hot zone: Global insights from frontline physicians on meeting the COVID-19 surge
By Diku Mandavia, MD, FACEP, FRCPC 
A physician shares perspectives from physicians around the world on the battle against the global coronavirus pandemic and evolving treatment approaches, including comments from an Italian physician in Lodi, Italy, who diagnosed the individual believed to be “Patient One” of the Italian COVID-19 outb, 2021.

Physician Perspectives

Medicine should be for mind, body and spirit 
By Martin Bluth, MS, PhD
Healthcare financial leaders can foster improved patient outcomes and well-being by advocating for an approach to healthcare that includes acknowledging the spiritual aspect of patients as human beings.