If you can’t beat it, profit from it. That’s what Nashville-based HCA has been doing with self-pay patient accounts by way of a subsidiary, National Patient Accounts Services. Based in Louisville, Ky., NPAS (commonly pronounced “EN-pass”) is an...
The CMS said improper Medicare claims declined to 3.9% in 2007 from 4.4% in 2006 and 14.2% in 1996—the result of aggressive oversight efforts involving detailed data analysis in targeting areas where there might be waste, fraud and abuse. During the...
If you can’t beat it, profit from it. That’s what Nashville-based HCA has been doing with self-pay patient accounts by way of a subsidiary, National Patient Accounts Services. Based in Louisville, Ky., NPAS (commonly pronounced “EN-pass”) is an...
Hospitals are used to being wholesalers in a business that is going retail. While an HCA subsidiary is selling collection services on those retail accounts to other hospitals, a startup is borrowing an idea from the retail credit industry by...
Wal-Mart is on track to roll out as many as 2,000 in-store health clinics over the next five to seven years and is seeking to partner with hospitals and systems to offer the medical services to their customers.
Rural healthcare providers received encouraging news last week when they learned that $400 million is planned to be poured into a federal program in health information technology that could ultimately connect more than 6,000 healthcare providers...
Hospitals still aren’t hitting the bull’s-eye in their quality targets, despite areas of improvement, according to the annual report on quality and safety from the Joint Commission released last week.
The Joint Commission posted slightly lower profits in 2006 on revenue and expenses that increased marginally, according to its annual tax form filed last week.
The American College of Healthcare Executives closed 2006 with a loss from operations, despite membership gains, after the Chicago-based professional group overhauled its dues structure.
The Catholic Health Association reported a healthy profit for the year that ended in June, after better-than-expected investment returns offset the Catholic Health Association’s falling dues revenue.
The Chicago-based American Medical Association took in $8.6 million less in 2006 than it did in 2005, while spending increased more than $3 million over the previous year, according to its 2006 Internal Revenue Service Form 990.
The Federation of American Hospitals saw its net income plummet in 2006, as expenses grew more rapidly than revenue because an accounting review uncovered some costs that were not being accrued properly.
America’s Health Insurance Plans saw an uptick in total revenue in 2006 but also saw expenses grow to match, according to its 2006 Internal Revenue Service Form 990.
In two separate deals, Catholic Health East last week took major strides toward selling two financial underperformers in Western Pennsylvania to secular hospital systems that promised to continue the Catholic healthcare mission at the respective...
The promise of lowering healthcare spending through health savings accounts and other consumer-driven medical payment methods hasn’t come to fruition, at least not yet, as most consumers and employers remain wary of the high deductibles and risk...
The healthcare system in this country does a lot of things right, but there’s one thing it does better than anything else. It makes people rich. Even the biggest critics of the industry have figured out a way to personally profit from a system that...
The availability of quality, affordable care for all Americans is central to my vision for healthcare reform. All too often, though, the imperative of retaining and improving the quality of care is lost in the health reform debate.
Healthcare’s push to boost quality and curb costs by publicly reporting on price and performance may be critical to reform efforts, but patients probably have little use for what’s currently available, a new Commonwealth Fund/Modern...
Handing consumers hospital chargemasters to help them “shop” for the best deal is about as useful as handing them a scalpel and telling them to perform their own bypass surgery. Yet, the state of California in 2003 enacted a law requiring all...
Broad agreement that clinical performance measures should be publicly released marks a major transformation in the U.S. healthcare system. Several trends have combined to create this historic change. Increasing cost pressures and compelling data...
Regarding your cover story on veterans’ problems in getting care in rural areas (“Medicine off the battlefield,” Nov. 5, p. 6): Our Department of Veterans Affairs medical center has responded to the challenges of providing rural healthcare for...
Recently a friend sent me a new book entitled The Leaders We Need: And What Makes Us Follow by Michael Maccoby, a psychoanalyst, anthropologist and consultant. For anybody concerned about the lack of quality leadership in healthcare today,...
Hard times tend to inspire new alliances. A once-struggling physician-owned specialty hospital in Munster, Ind., has been reborn as a joint venture with a not-for-profit system.
