News Briefs: Financial and operational pressures continue for hospitals amid scattered positive signs
Recent financial data for the hospital industry illustrate continuing challenges even as some trends improve. Fitch Ratings released an analysis in early March that offers scant reason for optimism. Titled “Early NFP hospital medians show expected deterioration; will worsen,” it draws on data from hospitals with earlier 2022 financial year-ends. Those numbers show “materially weaker…
Robert Turner: Avoiding a bond covenant default takes aggressive action from a health system borrower
Not-for-profit hospitals and health systems have faced an increasingly difficult operating environment since inflation began to grow in mid-2021. Last year was particularly hard, beginning with a new wave of COVID-19 infections caused by the omicron variant, and followed by mounting expenses, staffing shortages, rising interest rates and investment losses. As a result, Kaufman Hall…
Reports on patient safety indicate progress, challenges and a need to focus on pediatric mental health
Recent reports add context to the issue of patient safety in hospitals and health systems. ECRI released a report that ranks the pediatric mental health crisis as the No. 1 patient safety issue in healthcare. The report cites a JAMA study that found increases of 29% in anxiety and 27% in depression between 2016 and…
Best practices for relieving unprecedented cost pressures facing healthcare providers
Due to labor cost increases, inflation, declining Medicare reimbursements and other reasons, health systems across the nation are feeling a new financial strain after the height of the pandemic.
Healthcare News of Note: Medicare to negotiate reduced prices for 40 drugs by 2028, says study
Medicare drug price negotiation has the potential to benefit Medicare beneficiaries across some of the most common disease states.
Healthcare News of Note: Most board members of the nation’s top hospitals work in finance or business
Less than 15% of board members at a sampling of the nation’s top hospitals are health professionals, while 56% work in finance or business. Since 2014, the number of medically disenfranchised people in the U.S. nearly doubled from 56 million to over 100 million, causing stress for providers and lower rates of immunization and rising…
David Johnson: Why healthcare’s cupboard is bare — its funding gravy train has run out of steam
Gravy train is a railroad term that originated in the early 1900s. It described a well-paid train run that didn’t require much effort. In modern parlance, speakers use it to describe easy-to-do tasks and cushy situations. The problem with gravy trains is that riding them too long engenders lazy, sloppy and wasteful behaviors. New York…
How to determine appropriate patient status and navigate observation-level care
The financial implications of ensuring appropriate patient status throughout a hospital stay are substantial, so it is in organizations’ interest to enhance the process.
Bank failures highlight importance of measuring counterparty risk
The recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank have focused attention on an often-overlooked issue: bank counterparty risk. From a treasurer’s perspective, banks are much more than account-holding institutions. They provide an array of critical payment and collection services, and the impact of losing access to these services cannot be overstated. The Federal…
Why the idea of disruption is so hard for healthcare leaders to understand
It’s time to talk about the word disruption – what it is and what it isn’t – because right now in healthcare it seems to be generating more angst than strategy. First, some good news. Disruption (shorthand for “disruptive innovation”) is just a theory. It’s an idea. That’s all. It was first introduced in the…