By Vince Galloro November 02, 2009 The faint echoes of the stock market boom are indicated by studying hospital defined-benefit pension plan filings for 2007. ... FULL STORY
By Melanie Evans October 26, 2009 The nation's economic and financial market woes have depleted healthcare endowments and raised questions about how best to manage portfolio risk. ... FULL STORY
By Melanie Evans October 19, 2009 In roughly nine months, Community Medical Centers went from an outcast in credit markets to a sought-after investment with a surplus of eager investors. ... FULL STORY
By Melanie Evans October 05, 2009 For healthcare borrowers that finance construction and expensive technology with municipal bonds, upheaval from the credit crisis threatened lasting changes to the market. But another disruption—less volatile, but perhaps more fundamental—was simultaneously under way. ... FULL STORY
By Melanie Evans September 07, 2009 Frank Sacco, president and CEO of Memorial Healthcare System in South Florida, was certain the nation's dour economy would boost traffic at the safety net system's primary-care clinics. What he didn't anticipate was the speed at which demand would surge, nor the raft of new patients from affluent neighborhoods who lost their income and health insurance to the recession. ... FULL STORY
By Melanie Evans August 17, 2009 Hospitals have always known why patients visit. Increasingly they now know exactly which patients will be able to pay for those visits. Income and credit scores have long been factors when consumers go to buy a car, home or apply for a credit card. Now consumers' financial profiles—credit card balances, income and overdue bills—are taking hold in healthcare. ... FULL STORY
By Melanie Evans August 03, 2009 An Arizona health system has joined roughly two dozen major U.S. employers, including giants AstraZeneca, Dow Chemical Co. and Sun Microsystems to break into reinsuring employee benefits through a wholly owned insurance subsidiary. Phoenix-based Banner Health in June became one of the first not-for-profit hospital operators to win approval from the U.S. Labor Department to reinsure employee benefits through a captive insurance company. ... FULL STORY
By Vince Galloro July 06, 2009 Even before Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. became shorthand for Wall Street disaster, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. was concerned about hospital pension funds. The independent, federally chartered guarantor of defined-benefit pension plans saw two challenges with the hospital industry after it undertook an internal study of healthcare pensions, says Suzanne Kelly, a senior financial analyst for the PBGC. ... FULL STORY
By Vince Galloro July 06, 2009 For the most part, for-profit hospital companies are not in the defined-benefit pension plan game.According to a March 2008 study of hospital pension plans by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., just 46, or 5.7%, of 802 defined-benefit pension plans are run by for-profit sponsors. Defined-benefit plans are “an anomaly of their past,” usually liabilities that came with their acquisitions of not-for-profit hospitals, says Suzanne Kelly, senior financial analyst with the PBGC. ... FULL STORY
By Melanie Evans June 15, 2009 As not-for-profit hospitals prepare for more detailed public disclosure of their charity care, a major healthcare finance association offered ideas on how hospitals might determine whether a patient’s unpaid account counts as charity care or bad debt. ... FULL STORY
