Prevailing wisdom is that no one will have the political appetite in 2008 to make a significant dent in the healthcare industry’s perennially full plate of issues. Of course, with a critical election on the nation’s agenda, everybody will be talking about healthcare reform; it’s just that nobody will be doing much about it, at least not this year. That leaves it up to market forces, and the markets are not looking that good either.
What is the business outlook for healthcare in 2007? Three words: consumerism, consumerism, consumerism. After years of turmoil emanating out of Washington for hospitals, the situation has become eerily quiet, relatively speaking. Although health issues were high on the priority list for Democrats during their successful campaign last year, no one is expecting any seismic changes for healthcare out of the nation’s capital. As a result, 2007 may be a good year for hospitals to look inward and prepare for the consumer revolution going on around them.
For the first time in more than a decade, Democratic lawmakers have the votes—and the bullhorn—to make revamping healthcare a top-shelf objective of their federal domestic agenda. But budgetary realities, the next round of politicking and even the Democrats’ own rules could impede their progress, health policy analysts say.
As 2007 came to a close, many of the themes of the year had yet to play themselves out. One of the biggest shifts was the return of healthcare reform as a national political issue. Every presidential candidate of both parties was forced to address the question, but as usual, nothing much actually got accomplished. Despite the Democrats’ takeover of Congress early in the year, they were unable to achieve even modest goals, such as an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Dawn Gideon has three priorities for St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers in 2006, and No. 1 is to divest three of the struggling New York hospital system's five hospitals, including St. Vincent Hospital Staten Island, where she is executive director.
After that, the system will focus on investing in those hospitals that remain, developing a technology program and beefing up physician recruitment, Gideon says. "If we can accomplish the first objective, I anticipate greater access to capital for the second," she says. Finally, St. Vincent aims to make 2006 the year that it emerges from what...
It wasn’t exactly the best of times and it wasn’t exactly the worst, either. But 2006 had enough of both elements to make for a very interesting year.
Despite some difficulties, statistics showed the hospital industry was in good shape financially. Physicians dodged a bullet at year’s end as Congress approved a freeze, rather than a 5% cut, in Medicare payments for 2007. Hospitals won a phase-in of a Medicare overhaul plan.
Some industry figures hoped the Democratic-controlled Congress elected in the fall would mean more money for providers in coming years.
I was in the middle of a rant about these being boom times for the healthcare industry when our holiday deadline hit a few weeks ago for our Dec. 20/27, 2004 issue, and I didn't get around to talking about the outlook for this year. I'm sorry to again disappoint all the healthcare naysayers out there, but I believe the boom times will continue in 2005. Continued economic growth is the best strategy for addressing the industry's continuing struggles with costs, access and quality.
In this issue's special report, our reporters highlight the challenges in the year ahead and how the industry...
If you liked 2004, a busy and tumultuous year, you must have loved 2005. It began with providers responding to an international disaster and ended with the mop-up of a domestic catastrophe. Sandwiched between were lots of little misfortunes, with a sprinkling of good news to keep healthcare professionals from running for the exits.
For 2005, Modern Healthcare readers polled its readers on what they viewed as the most important stories of the year. More than 200 people responded to the online survey. Their picks offer a good measure of the year. The top five choices, ranked by...
U.S. healthcare providers mobilize quickly to help victims of the Asian tsunami as the death toll climbs past 100,000. Some critics contend that U.S. government officials were slow to respond to the disaster and that aid was initially "stingy."
Other highlights
Two of the nation's largest hospital chains enter 2005 with legal settlements of allegations of unnecessary care and fraudulent billing. Tenet Healthcare Corp. agrees to pay $395 million to settle about 750 lawsuits by patients who claimed that they were subjected to unnecessary cardiac procedures at Redding...
Rust never sleeps, and neither do we at Modern Healthcare. In our Dec. 8, 2003, issue, Charles S. Lauer, publisher of Modern Healthcare, announced the merger of this magazine with our sister publication, Modern Physician. And while most of our competitors were taking a few weeks off during the holidays, we were implementing the merger, which is designed to better serve our readers as Modern Healthcare evolves into a total healthcare industry publication.
Visible signs of that merger appear in this issue. First, you'll notice the new tagline on our cover under the Modern Healthcare banner:...
Wind chills aside, the first month of the election year gets hot. Providers receive both good and bad grades, and the theme of access to healthcare, which recurs throughout the year, moves to center stage.
Other highlights:
* HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality publishes its first annual report on healthcare quality during Congress' winter recess. The government says providers have made strides in quality improvement but qualified the praise by saying there's still a long way to go. The report says about 95% of the $1.4 trillion spent in the U.S. on medical...
If Benjamin Franklin were around today, he'd probably name three things that are now certain in this world--death, taxes and higher healthcare costs.
Expensive new drugs and medical procedures are proliferating, and an aging population is using more of them. Add to that a worsening shortage of nurses and other caregivers as well as a sluggish economy--which has left more Americans without health insurance and is compelling states to slash deficits by squeezing Medicaid--and it's all but guaranteed that healthcare will be more expensive in the coming year.
The U.S. Justice Department filed a $323 million civil Medicare fraud lawsuit against Tenet Healthcare Corp., marking another escalation of the legal problems befalling the nation's second-largest for-profit hospital chain. The lawsuit also alleges that the company falsely certified that it was in compliance with a 9-year-old corporate integrity agreement signed by Tenet's predecessor company, National Medical Enterprises. No trial date has been set. Two months later, the chain announced plans to sell 14 of its 114 hospitals. In April, Jeffrey Barbakow resigned...
When we look back at the year in healthcare, we should remember 2003 as a year of action. All too often, the year is marked by the release of dozens of white papers put together by blue-ribbon task forces. And the only action that takes place is the filing of the white papers along with all the other white papers that have come before them.
This year was different, and we're not sure why. (If you'd like to speculate on why, please drop us a line, and we'll print your responses. Could it be that Republicans know how to get things done while Democrats can't get their act together?) When we...
