Policy clarity drives hospitals’ M&A surge
Hospital mergers and acquisitions (M&As) jumped in 2026 to a six-year high amid greater clarity in policies that will affect those organizations. Hospital M&A activity comes in stark contrast to other parts of the healthcare sector, which have slowed transactions due to higher borrowing costs. The 22 hospital and health system transactions announced in Q1…
Providers not seeing prior authorization improvement
Amid promises from health plans that they have dialed back their use of prior authorization, hospitals and health systems are not seeing any reduction in their use, say advisers. In April, health plans announced that they eliminated 11% of prior authorizations (PAs) across a range of medical services, representing 6.5 million fewer PAs for patients.…
FastFinance: Patient collections trends; SDP cuts rule
HFMA’s FastFinance newsletter is now a podcast. Host Rich Daly discusses the most current and relevant healthcare news, delivered in an easily digestible format. Hospitals and health systems have improved their front-end patient collections over the last year. But back-end collections are faltering. Also, this week’s Weird Number: $1.3 billion. That’s the amount of Medicaid…
15 trends from UnitedHealthcare
A surge in high-cost claims was among the trends last year that UnitedHealthcare identified in its employer-sponsored health plans. The dominant healthcare payer’s 2026 Health Trends Report used data from UnitedHealthcare’s self-funded and fully insured plans. The annual report used claims filed from November 2024 to October 2025 and paid through January 2026. Top findings from the…
Health systems boost front-end collections
Amid rising bad debt, health systems are improving front-end collections, according to surveys. Pre-service collections as a share of self-pay collections have improved from an average of 16% in 2025 to 21% in 2026, which signals that more organizations are capturing revenue successfully before care is delivered, according to a survey of 205 healthcare revenue…
Hospitals freeze jobs in April
Hospital job creation ground to a halt in April, even as new positions proliferated in the overall healthcare sector. Hospitals added no new jobs in April, according to unadjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). When BLS applied its seasonal adjustment, it counted 4,300 new positions. That was the first time hospital jobs…
Concerns raised over copay-only plans
Fast-growing copay-only health plans can have adverse financial effects for health systems, an adviser warned. Health system CFOs have told Mike Ruiz, senior director, financial transformation advisory services at Premier, that the requirements around the use of copay-only plans have left a growing number of patients with uncovered bills that are turning into bad debt.…
Medicare Advantage turmoil continues
Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollment growth has slowed to its weakest in 15 years, but it remains the dominant Medicare segment. MA enrollment, as of April 1, increased only 2.4% from April 2025, according to an analysis by Mark Farrah Associates. Enrollment increases have slowed from 3.8% in April 2025 and 6.4% in April 2024. The…
Research on price caps fueling their spread
Policymakers are using research that inaccurately concludes that hospital price caps do not hurt the finances of those organizations to justify the ongoing spread of such policies, says a hospital strategic adviser. “People are using operating metrics that conveniently make the argument that hospitals are highly profitable in those states,” Jeff Goldsmith, president of Health…
States overhaul certificate-of-need laws
States have advanced a range of reforms to their certificate-of-need (CON) laws amid federal pressure to weaken or eliminate them. The highest-profile change, so far this year, was Tennessee’s April 16 passage of a bill (SB1369) to repeal its CON requirements for acute care hospitals. CON requirements for most acute care hospitals in the state…