Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
Prospects Mixed for Non-Profit Hospitals in 2019
There’s good news and bad news for non-profit hospitals in 2019, according to Fitch Ratings, the bond-rating company. The good news: For many, major IT investments have been completed. Many have adjusted to the reality of falling inpatient volume. Many that saw reduced margins as a result of launching, purchasing, or participating in provider-sponsored plans to compete in health exchanges have scaled back those efforts. The bad: profits and margins may continue to decline – but those declines will not be as steep as they have been in recent years. [...]
ACA Repeal Would Drive Up Uninsured, Uncompensated Care
At the same time that the Trump administration announced that it has asked a federal court to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act, the Urban Institute has published a report detailing the potential impact of the health care reform law’s repeal. According to the Urban Institute report, repealing the entire Affordable Care Act would add almost 20 million Americans to the ranks of the uninsured. Medicaid and CHIP enrollment would fall by 15.4 million people and millions of others would lose the tax credits they used to purchase insurance. Some [...]
Feds Seek More EHR in Post-Acute-Care Settings
Electronic health records may find their way into more post-acute-care settings as a result of a request for information published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. In the RFI, CMS notes that EHR adoption has been slow in the post-acute sector and asks stakeholders what it can do to accelerate the adoption of technology designed to facilitate communication among caregivers. While EHR adoption has occurred in other areas, its use is less common in the post-acute sector, and even when used, it is used more for record-keeping than [...]
A New Trend: Tying Insurance Payments to Medicare Rates?
There may be a growing movement to tie some hospital payments directly to Medicare rates. Montana started doing it two years ago, linking payments for hospital services provided to state employees to Medicare rates. Oregon will start a similar program this fall. And now, North Carolina is laying plans for a similar approach while Delaware is considering doing so. Montana is paying an average of 234 percent of Medicare hospital rates. Oregon will pay 200 percent of Medicare rates. North Carolina is talking about paying Medicare rates plus 82 percent, [...]
Mixed Verdict: Home Health Leads to More Readmissions But Lower Costs
Readmission rates are greater for patients discharged from hospitals to home health care than they are for those discharged to skilled nursing facilities but home health services cost so much less than nursing homes that home health saves money even with the higher numbers of hospital readmissions. This is one of the major findings of a new study comparing differences in outcomes for patients who are admitted to skilled nursing facilities upon discharge from the hospital to those for patients who go direct home and receive home health services. The [...]