Cost Effectiveness of Health Report, January 2024

This issue of HFMA’s Cost Effectiveness of Health Report, sponsored by Kaufman, Hall & Associates, LLC, offers perspectives on developments in personalized medicine for patients and insights into how healthcare providers can help to maintain Medicaid coverage in their communities.

Healthcare 2030

Let’s get personal: Tailoring care to the patient’s needs presents an opportunity for hospitals and physicians
By Nick Hut
Spurred by continuing technological advances and recognition by legacy healthcare stakeholders that the status quo care models need updating, personalized medicine increasingly is gaining traction.

Medicaid

Limit financial risk from Medicaid redetermination
By Noel Filipe
At a time when patients are being increasingly disenrolled from Medicaid, provider organization leaders can take proactive steps to limit the loss of such coverage in their patient populations.

Value-based payment

Why providers are struggling to succeed in value-based care
By Richard Jackson, Kevin Dotson and Munzoor Shaikh
A recent survey uncovered some widely unacknowledged reasons for the industry’s slow progress toward broad adoption of value-based payment contracts.

Financial outlook

Downgrades topple upgrades: 5 key takeaways from rating activity in 2023
Sponsored by Kaufman Hall
By Lisa Goldstein
The ratio of rating downgrades to upgrades was at a high level for all three rating agencies in 2023.

Leadership

Alan Lovelace: Healthcare CFOs require stamina to respond  to post-COVID pressures
By Steven Berger, FHFMA
Alan Lovelace, vice president and CFO of Stillwater Medical Center (SMC) — and a 30-year member of HFMA — offers advice on what today’s hospital or health system CFOs can do to keep their organizations on a stable financial footing in the financially fraught post-COVID-19 era.

Healthcare News of Note

CDC urges healthcare providers to boost flu, COVID-19 and RSV vaccinations, and some hospitals require masking as respiratory illnesses spread
By Deb Filipek
Healthcare providers were notified in mid-December about low vaccination rates against influenza, COVID-19 and RSV, potentially leading to more severe disease and increased healthcare capacity strain. Now hospitals in at least eight states are requiring masking.