Physicians and finance: Managing the differences is critical to building clinical value
To work together effectively, finance and clinical leaders must not only understand but also value and acknowledge the benefits to be gained from their different perspectives on what constitutes success.
Financial Sustainability
The economics of a telehealth visit: A time-based study at Penn Medicine
Research into the costs of delivering telehealth versus in-person visits by the Department of Orthopaedics at Penn Medicine sought to answer the health systems’ questions about the long-term economic viability of telemedicine services, and to help inform their conversations with payers about how much they should appropriately be paid for the services.
COVID-19 requires intensified due diligence to understand its impact on the financial performance of health systems
Analyzing a health system’s financial performance is critical when making business decisions for the organization, but performing such an analysis is far from being straightforward for 2020 and 2021.
Cost reporting in the time of COVID-19 could have an impact on hospital payment
The changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic that hospitals must report in their annual cost reports will be pervasive throughout the reported data. Given that CMS and some state agencies use cost reports i9nformation to establish future rates, it is critical that hospitals exercise heightened due diligence in preparing their cost reports throughout the public health emergency.
Expense increases offset physician practice productivity and revenue gains
Physician groups across the country saw productivity and revenue improvements in the second quarter of 2021 compared with both the same period in 2020 and pre-pandemic levels seen in Q4 2019, according to Kaufman Hall’s latest Physician Flash Report. However, significant increases in expenses and continued high levels of physician investment compared with the pre-pandemic period remain areas of concern.
Financial Sustainability Report: August 2021
The August 2021 issue of the Financial Sustainability Report, sponsored by Kaufman Hall, explores the impacts of COVID-19 on hospital cost reporting and financial statements, and why a hospital’s future payment levels may depend on its due diligence around these processes today.
Financial Sustainability Report: July 2021
The July 2021 issue of the Financial Sustainability Report, sponsored by Kaufman Hall, includes an account of how one health system assessed the benefits and risk associated with moving its 340B covered-entity pharmacy enterprise to a Limited Liability Company. The issue also includes a commentary on CMS’s new Acute Hospital Care at Home program and a discussion of a new metric, equivalent net patient revenue (ENPR), which organizations can use to assess the relative value of proposed investments in alternative revenue sources.
Hospital care at home signifies an important innovation in acute care delivery
Although the CMS Acute Hospital Care at Home program is still early in its development in the U.S., early adopters show evidence of the program’s exciting promise, including positive impacts on health outcomes, an improved patient and provider experience, reduced cost of care and overall healthcare savings.
Maintaining the equilibrium of the physician enterprise amid rapid change is a matter of balance
To ensure the proper functioning of the physician enterprise, hospitals and health systems must establish a balance among three dimensions: The clinicians’ productivity, the capacity to provide patients with access to care when they need it, and he volume of existing and potential patients in the market.