Under the House’s updated version of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), provider-sponsored plans expect decreased federal funding resulting in many of the people they cover becoming uninsured, and also hospital closures. For example, one CEO of a provider-sponsored plan said recently at a not-for-profit healthcare investor conference, “The AHCA scares the hell out […]
. . . just a brief newsletter/blog this holiday week. The Congressional Budget Office (CB)) assessment of the new American Health Care Act is in. Some highlights include: Reduction of federal deficit by $119 billion 23 million people would be added to the ranks of the uninsured by 2026 Savings from reductions in […]
Economists estimate that two-thirds of all the cost of health care relates to what are called social determinants of health—those factors outside the acute care setting that affect health and cost. These factors include everything from exercise and healthy diet, healthy weight, to avoiding substance abuse or other self-destructive behaviors, to ensuring that people have […]
On May 4 the House of Representatives passed a new version of the American Health Care Act (AHC) that made deep cuts to both Medicaid funding and marketplace subsidies. It now moves to the Senate, where experts predict it will undergo substantial changes. Hospital groups opposed the newer version of the bill primarily because […]
(Originally published in Nasdaq’s MarketInsite, March 30, 2017, and written by Gordon Clark, President and CEO of iProtean, now part of Veralon) Cyberattacks. They are perhaps the most vexing security threats facing businesses today. To have a computer connected to the outside world is by definition to be vulnerable. Yet an analysis published in The NTT […]
(Excerpts from a presentation by Seth Edwards, Premier, Inc. at the iProtean, now part of Veralon Symposium, March 2017) Helpful Acronyms and Definitions: MACRA: Medicare Access and Chip Reauthorization Act of 2015 QPP: Quality Payment Program—basically, a regulation that enacts the MACRA legislation MIPS: Merit-based Incentive Payment system—one of two tracks created under MACRA […]
Republican plans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with their own design have put healthcare CEOs in a state of “high anxiety,” according to a recent survey conducted by Modern Healthcare. The first-quarter survey of Modern Healthcare’s CEO Power Panel received 81 responses from 110 of the CEOs contacted. It also […]
The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) released an assessment of possible and/or upcoming policy changes under the new administration. We have been waiting for HFMA to speak on ramifications to the non-insurance side of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), so we welcome the report and provide a portion of it here. The new secretaries […]
Modern Healthcare recently released a report on “cyberdefense,” and because this is a timely topic of interest to our subscribers, we present excerpts from the report below. A link to the full article appears at the end of this blog/newsletter. “Cybersecurity platforms that employ advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and predictive analytics […]
A recent American Hospital Association study reported that uncompensated care costs (UCC) in 2015 were the smallest share of hospital costs (4.2 percent of total expenses) in at least 25 years. The $35.7 billion in 2015 UCC was the lowest amount since 2007. (Uncompensated Hospital Care Cost Fact Sheet, American Hospital Association, December 2016) […]