Safety net hospitals could see revenue squeezed on more than one front under health reform.
As my colleague Maureen McKinney reported this week, safety net hospitals may fail to earn performance-based payments, according to research published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
The authors compared performance of safety net hospitals on patient experience measures tied to value-based payments and found they “performed more poorly than other hospitals on nearly every measures of patient experience and that gaps in performance were sizable and persistent over time.”
Under value-based payments, Medicare holds onto 1% hospital payments, which is allocated based on hospital performance.
Meanwhile, health reform, as signed into law, included a shift in the financing of healthcare for people who cannot afford it. The law reduced subsidies to offset hospital losses on uninsured patients by $36 billion over 10 years. But projected 34 million would gain subsidized insurance through Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program or exchanges under the law. Hospitals would see fewer direct subsidies for the uninsured as more patients gain insurance.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
Fairview Health Services saw its credit rating from Moody's Investors Service drop one notch, and analysts said the outlook for the system is negative, in part because of the exit of its chief executive officer and turmoil over the health system's contracts with Accretive Health.
Moody's lowered Fairview's credit to an A3, a relatively strong rating, from A2. The Minneapolis-based system, which includes seven hospitals, saw its operating margin for 2011 (0.5%) squeezed by a new children's hospital and information technology installation, the rating agency said. Cash reserves declined last year. And its debt portfolio includes swaps that have strained finances across the sector since the credit crisis.
Read more »
Permalink | Post a Comment
