Healthcare News of Note: Medicare to negotiate reduced prices for 40 drugs by 2028, says study
Medicare drug price negotiation has the potential to benefit Medicare beneficiaries across some of the most common disease states.
Healthcare News of Note: Most board members of the nation’s top hospitals work in finance or business
Less than 15% of board members at a sampling of the nation’s top hospitals are health professionals, while 56% work in finance or business. Since 2014, the number of medically disenfranchised people in the U.S. nearly doubled from 56 million to over 100 million, causing stress for providers and lower rates of immunization and rising…
David Johnson: Why healthcare’s cupboard is bare — its funding gravy train has run out of steam
Gravy train is a railroad term that originated in the early 1900s. It described a well-paid train run that didn’t require much effort. In modern parlance, speakers use it to describe easy-to-do tasks and cushy situations. The problem with gravy trains is that riding them too long engenders lazy, sloppy and wasteful behaviors. New York…
Data capture and coding for social determinants of health are works in progress, per reports
In the effort to bring social determinants of health (SDoH) more under the purview of healthcare providers, one tricky aspect is establishing a data and coding infrastructure. Recent reports highlight this challenge. For example, a survey conducted for the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) found that although 78% of 2,637 respondents said their organizations…
Financial and operational pressures continue for hospitals amid some positive signs
New financial data for the hospital industry illustrate continuing challenges even as some trends improve. Fitch Ratings released an analysis in early March that offers scant reason for optimism. Titled “Early NFP Hospital Medians Show Expected Deterioration; Will Worsen,” it draws on data from hospitals with earlier 2022 financial year-ends. Those numbers show “materially weaker…
Affordability of healthcare is not enhanced when providers form health systems, studies find
The efficiencies gained when providers operate as a health system don’t always translate to care that is more cost-effective, according to two recently published JAMA studies on pricing. In one study, researchers with Harvard Medical School and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) examined 2018 data from various sources, including CMS administrative data, IRS…
The real dangers of an obesity diagnosis
Medical researcher and patient advocate Ragen Chastain discusses why the body mass index is misleading and how it can lead to discrimination in healthcare.
Aaron Crane: What’s cost effectiveness of health going to take?
We say we want to improve the cost effectiveness of health (CEoH). But what does that really mean? Let’s think about it for a moment. The most ambiguous word here is cost. Hearing it, most hospital- and provider-centric leaders would first think about the expenses incurred in their operations: Labor, supplies, utilities, purchased services, etc.…
AI and the rise of human-machine collaboration in healthcare
Commentators, researchers and academics can’t stop finding applications for ChatGPT.a Two of its recent claims to fame include passing all three medical licensing exams and the final exam for a core MBA class at Wharton.b ChatGPT, short for Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, is a form of conversational artificial intelligence (AI). The concept is not new.…
4 reasons why now is the time to revisit value-based care
Lessons from the pandemic, investment trends, shifts in Medicare policy, and technological change suggest that now may be the time to reconsider and revisit value-based care. Value-based care has been a hot topic for years now. Every conference, every industry meeting and every publication has talked about the importance of moving “from volume to value.”…