Center For Studying Health System Change

Study: Some safety-net hospitals putting income over mission

Anne Zieger — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:26:45 -0400

In today's brutally-competitive hospital marketplace, every hospital has to focus on finding profitable services to deliver and minimizing bad debt. Unfortunately, being profit-driven can sometimes conflict with a hospital's mission. This is especially the case for safety-net hospitals, according to a new study by the Center for Studying Health System Change. The study, which appears in Health Affairs, concludes that efforts like specialty-service marketing and new construction could compromise the hospitals' other efforts. Overall, safety-net hospitals aren't as financially healthy as an average hospital (which, given the state of the industry, is a sad commentary). About one-third of all safety-net hospitals lost money in 2005, according to the study's authors, who tracked 12 regions for over a decade.

Many safety-net hospitals have gone the route of Seattle's Harborview Medical Center, which has built out its campus and aggressively advertised "centers of emphasis" like neurosciences, orthopedic reconstructive procedures and spinal surgery. Execs there say they need 40 percent of their patients to be commercially-insured to stay financially viable, and that pushing higher-end services like these helps them to stay afloat where others have failed. Meanwhile, Harborview has taken some steps to limit transfers of uninsured patients, something the study's authors say subjects patients to a "wallet biopsy."

To learn more about this study:
- read this piece from The Seattle Times

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Study: Wellness programs common despite lack of savings

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 06:59:54 -0400

According to a new study, health and wellness initiatives seem to be a matter of faith among big employers. According to research by the Center for Studying Health System Change, many employers are adopting such programs, despite the fact that there's currently little evidence such programs actually save money. The researchers, who studied 12 nationally-representative metropolitan communities, concluded that large employers are looking for long-term strategies to address their rising healthcare costs. The large employers also see wellness programs as a means of giving their employees more responsibility for their health care decisions and costs.

For more information:
- read this Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report brief

Trend: Medical prices set to jump again

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:59:57 -0400

While medical prices fell for the fourth consecutive year in 2007, observers say that health costs likely will shoot up again, soon. According to an article in the journal Health Affairs by author Paul Ginsburg of the Center for Studying Health System Change, there are several factors contributing to the coming jump in prices, including a hospital's need to cover the cost of their tremendous recent investments in new buildings; the growth in physician ownership of ambulatory surgery centers and specialty clinics, which Ginsburg says has historically driven up prices; and a shift in the overall U.S. economic cycle. Such price increases could drastically hike health insurance premiums. Even with health cost increases having been moderate over the last few years, health insurance premiums still have risen 78 percent since 2001.

To learn more about this trend:
- read this article from The Oregonian

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