Healthcare Finance
Study: Higher co-pays drop drug use, raise costs
New research suggests that, at least in patients with chronic diseases, raising drug co-pays tends to cut drug use--but also raise the rate of patient hospitalizations and ED visits. The research, conducted by Dana Goldman, director of RAND Health's Bing Center on Health Economics, found that for every 10 percent increase in consumer cost-sharing, pharmacy spending drops 2 to 6 percent. However, in patients with conditions like congestive heart failure, high cholesterol, diabetes and …
... Read more...Manor Care goes private in $6.3B deal
The Carlyle Group is taking national skilled nursing and assisted living facility operator Manor Care private in a $6.3 billion deal that pays stockholders $67 per share. The chain operates 278 skilled nursing facilities and 65 assisted living centers across the United States. The equity firm is paying out roughly $4.9 billion in cash, and will also assume $1.4 billion in debt.
The Manor Care deal follows the …
Hospitals collecting patient bills up front
Want to avoid bad debt? One way to do that is to simply collect what you're owed as quickly and aggressively as possible--and that's what many hospitals are doing. Increasingly, hospitals are opting to collect co-pays and deductibles at the point of care or soon thereafter, hoping to stem rising tides of unpaid bills. They're determining how much to ask for, in many cases, by analyzing not only the patient's coverage but their personal financial situation as well. Vanderbilt University …
... Read more...Union slams Beth Israel financial practices
A new report by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) claims that Boston teaching hospital Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is not playing fair when it comes to billing for charity care. The union says that that Beth Israel is being too aggressive in seeking compensation from a state pool set up to reimburse hospitals for giving free care to the uninsured. It contends that Beth Israel is billing too much for emergency department visits, and moreover, is being too aggressive …
... Read more...Wisconsin moving ahead with hospital tax plans
Nearly all of Wisconsin's hospitals--a full 95 percent--are not-for-profits that enjoy a state property tax exemption. Despite resistance from the hospitals, the state is continuing to look at recouping some of that revenue with a separate hospital-specific tax. State governor Jim Doyle (D) wants to impose an 0.8 percent tax on the state's 109 non-profit hospitals, which he says will generate $418 million in revenues for the state over the next two years. The proposal has been posted by a …
... Read more...Physicians top U.S. best-paid list
What was true in the past continues to be true: doctors can make big bucks. According to Forbes magazine, anesthesiologists have the highest wages in the U.S., a mean annual income $184,340 per year. That's a 5.8 percent increase over last year. Coming in at a close second were surgeons, at a mean annual income of $184,150 per year. They too saw a pay increase from last year, in this case 3.6 percent. Other leaders were OB/GYNs ($178,040), orthodontists ($176,900), oral surgeons …
... Read more...Financial turmoil at Caritas Christi
The physician group serving Boston's Caritas Christi Health Care system has replaced the acting chief of its physicians group in the midst of an accounting scandal. The 2,000-member physicians group, which auditors say overstated revenue by nearly $10 million, has been a money-loser for the system for several years. The system, which is run by the Archdiocese of Boston, has been in talks to transfer ownership of its six hospitals to Catholic hospital chain Ascension Health. As part of the …
... Read more...Study: MDs generate $1.5M annually for hospitals
A new study has quantified something physicians already knew: that they contribute surprisingly big bucks to hospital revenue. The study, published by physician search firm Merritt, Hawkins & Associates, concluded that an average physician will generate $1.5 million in net revenue a year for affiliated hospitals. (MH&A got its data from hospital chief financial officers.) This number has actually fallen since 2004, when revenue generated by all specialists hit $1.9 million--a fact …
... Read more...Missouri hospitals claim $1.1B in charity care
As IRS scrutiny of non-profits continues, it makes sense for hospitals to proactively prove that they're justifying their tax-free status. That's why, in part, that Missouri hospitals have come together to report on their charity-care and community efforts, which they say were worth $1.1 billion last year. The new report, which was prepared by the Missouri Hospital Association, calculates that the state's hospitals contribute $7.8 billion in salaries, benefits, taxes and capital …
... Read more...Physicians rate insurers on claims payments
A new vendor survey rating health plans on how quickly they pay doctors has ranked UnitedHealth last and Aetna first among leading national insurers. The annual survey, conducted by payment services provider athenahealth and journal Physicians Practice, found that UnitedHealth paid claims in 38.3 days on average. Aetna, meanwhile, had average payment times of 29.8 days. The worst offender among all health plans measured was New York's Medicaid plan, which averages a whopping …
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