An article in Health Services Research examines how hospitals respond to Medicare's lowering of reimbursement, finding that generally they lower their costs of providing service over time.
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An Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality brief details inpatient hospital use in 2011 and trends since 1997.
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In the wall of shame category, the list of the top ten compensated "non-profit" health system CEOs is topped by one earning over $6 million. There is no justification for non-profit, usually tax-exempt systems paying this kind of compensation and it has flow down effects on compensation of others that raises hospital costs significantly.
http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/compensation-issues/ceo-compensation-of-the-25-top-grossing-nonprofit-hospitals-2014.htmlResearch published in the New England Journal of Medicine finds little value in improving outcomes by use of surgical safety checklists.
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Health Affairs published yet another piece of research showing wide variation in hospital pricing, probably related to market power and little relation between high prices and high quality.
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According to the American Hospital Association, hospitals provided over $45 billion in uncompensated care in 2012, including charity care and bad debt write-offs, and they had $56 billion in under compensated care, which is there way of calculating that Medicare and Medicaid paid them less than the cost of care.
http://www.ahanews.com/ahanews/jsp/display.jsp?dcrpath=AHANEWS/AHANewsNowArticle/data/ann_011414_underpayment&domain=AHANEWSMaryland, which already has an all-payer hospital rate-setting regime, has gotten permission from HHS and agreement from state hospitals to limit increases in hospital spending to no more than the rate of economic growth in the state.
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2014/January/10/maryland-hospitals-radical-plan-limit-spending-change-payment.aspx?utm_campaign=KHN%253A%2520Daily%2520Health%2520Policy%2520Report&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=11610717&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9SEG6pdPW8qVK7FcqAlMvBEgSMwwLuarGWWBsuw6ag8NN2b4FQyth_m4OtBfUXa48rvR84femOmzMqRNCbwEEp26S7aQ&_hsmi=11610717According to a report from a CitiBank analyst, hospital admissions are the weakest in a decade, due to a change in the Medicare observation stay rules and confusion over the health care rollout.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/17/us-hospitals-admissions-idUSBRE9BG18J20131217?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNewsOne reason hospital prices may rise is that the cost of supplies and equipment that they use can go up rapidly. The Modern Healthcare/ECRI Institute Technology Price Index finds for example that the average cost of surgical tables, a mundane item, is up about 16% in the last year.
https://www.ecri.org/Pages/PriceIndex.aspxA Milliman report shows that the same cancer treatment costs far more in a hospital outpatient setting than it does in a physician's office.
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A Statistical Brief from AHRQ looks at preventable hospitalizations, finding that they fell 6% for adults and 40% for children from 2005 to 2010, saving about 2% of adult hospital spending and 32% of pediatric hospital spending. In a couple of areas, however, potentially avoidable hospital stays increased, notably for hypertension, up over 30%, and diabetic complications, up over 20%.
http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb151.jspAbout this Blog
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.
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