News Briefs
States Investigate Nonprofit Hospitals' Lack of Charity Care
More than a dozen states have considered or passed legislation to better define charity care, to increase transparency about the benefits hospitals provide, or, in some cases, to set minimum financial thresholds for charitable help to their communities. The growing interest in how tax-exempt hospitals operate -- from lawmakers, the public, and the media -- has coincided with a stubborn increase in consumers' medical debt.
(Source: KFF Health News, 2023-07-11)
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House Advances Legislation Targeting PBMs, Price Transparency
A key House panel has advanced yet another legislative package that aims to inject greater transparency into healthcare, particularly for pharmacy benefit managers. The package, passed in the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, includes four bills that touch on hospital bill practices, PBM fees, employers' fiduciary duties, and more.
(Source: FierceHealthcare, 2023-07-13)
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CMS Halts CMP Grants, Leaving Nursing Homes Without Funding
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has paused most grants distributed from its civil monetary penalty reinvestment program, leaving some nursing home leaders without a much-needed funding source for patient- and staff-centered programming. CMS, in a statement to McKnight's Long-Term News, gave no end date for potential delays related to "an ongoing comprehensive review" of the CMP reinvestment program, which began in April.
(Source: McKnight's Long-Term Care News, 2023-07-14)
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Hospital, Health System M&A Increased in Second Quarter
Healthcare merger and acquisition activity has increased, bringing the number of deals back up to pre-pandemic levels, according to the newest Kaufman Hall M&A Quarterly Activity Report. From April through the end of June 2023, there were 20 hospital and health system M&A transactions announced, making this the highest number of transactions announced since Q1 2020.
(Source: HealthLeaders Media, 2023-07-14)
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Report Suggests How Generative AI Could Help Health Industry
Generative artificial intelligence could capitalize on the healthcare industry's wealth of unstructured data, alleviating provider documentation burden and improving relationships between patients and their health plans, according to a new report by consulting firm McKinsey. The report argues generative AI could help payers quickly pull benefits material for members or help call center workers aggregate information during conversations about claims denials.
(Source: Healthcare Dive, 2023-07-13)
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P.E. Acquisitions of Physician Practices Raise Prices Up to 16%
Private equity acquisitions of physician practices are becoming more common, leading to price increases ranging from four percent to 16 percent, data from the American Antitrust Institute found. The report, Monetizing Medicine: Private Equity and Competition in Physician Practice Markets, was developed in collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley Petris Center on Health Care Markets and Consumer Welfare and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
(Source: RevCycle Intelligence, 2023-07-12)
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Number of Physicians in Private Practices Fell 13% Over 10 Years
The share of physicians working in private practices, or those wholly owned by physicians, fell by 13 percent between 2012 and 2022 -- from 60.1 percent to 46.7 percent, according to a survey from the American Medical Association. The percentage of physicians working in practices at least partially owned by a hospital or health system increased by almost eight percent during that time frame, while the share of physicians working in hospitals increased by four percent.
(Source: Healthcare Dive, 2023-07-13)
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Digital Health Funding Market Slowed in First Half of 2023
After a wild ride in 2020 and 2021, the digital health funding market is entering a new reality with fewer deals and smaller average check sizes. In the first six months of 2023, U.S. digital health startups raised $6.1 billion across 244 deals, with an average deal size of $24.8 million, according to an analysis by Rock Health, a venture fund dedicated to digital health.
(Source: FierceHealthcare, 2023-07-11)
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Over Half of Nursing Homes Won't Meet 3.5-Hour Staff Requirement
A national analysis finds that more than half of U.S. nursing homes would not meet a daily, 3.5-hour nurse staffing requirement and just 29 percent would meet a standard of 4.0 hours. The work from KFF exposes the challenge that nursing homes will have if the long-anticipated federal staffing mandate from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services requires 4.1 hours of direct care per resident per day, as some sector observers have predicted.
(Source: McKnight's Long-Term Care News, 2023-07-17)
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Healthcare Organizations Still Failing to Thwart Cyberattacks
A massive data breach affecting 11 million HCA Healthcare patients provided a stark reminder of how often the defenses of America's largest healthcare organizations are hacked. Healthcare breaches have doubled in the last three years, HHS reports.
(Source: Axios, 2023-07-12)
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U.S. News & World Report to Stop Ranking Honor Roll Hospitals
After 34 years of hospital rankings -- including the last seven years, which found Mayo atop the list -- U.S. News & World Report will no longer assign a ranking number to hospitals overall, the magazine announced. The top "Honor Roll" of hospitals will list them without numeral ranks.
(Source: Post Bulletin, 2023-07-13)
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