Kaiser to buy Geisinger?

Yes, this appears to be the case. Medscape reports: In one of the largest healthcare deals to date, Kaiser Permanente is acquiring Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Health and investing $5 billion to fold it into a new nonprofit subsidiary called Risant Health, which is set to purchase additional medical groups in coming years.While regulators still must review…

Lessons from the hospital readmissions reduction program

A commentary from Sheehy et al. (2023) argues that the hospital readmissions reduction program has been a disappointment. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”—a quote featured prominently on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Measures Management website.3 But like any initiative intended to improve quality, evaluation, and iteration is key…

The hospital travels to you

In Bangladesh, seasonal floods occur due to snow melt from the Himalayas as well seasonal monsoons. How can villages in Bangladesh get health care if they don’t have a boat to transport them to regional health care centers? The answer–according to a recent article in The Economist–is that the hospital comes to them. Three hours’…

Quality Measurement of German Hospitals

Public reporting of hospital quality of care could improve the care patients receive through at least two pathways. First, patients (or their physicians) could send patients to higher quality hospitals (i.e., the selection pathway). Alternatively, hospitals themselves could have behavioral responses to the metrics and may improve quality of care in response to public reporting…

Is it time to end 340B?

A Health Affiairs Forefront article by DiGiorgio (2023) argues the 340B has outlived its purposes. He writes:  By mandating that drug companies give a large discount to covered entities, the majority of which are hospitals with disproportionate share or critical access designations, the 340B program was intended to provide a financial buffer for institutions such as the…

Hospital finances in 2022: Outlook is grim

Based on some recent reports, hospital finances in 2022 look poor. Government cash infusions from COVID-19 were helpful during the pandemic but have largely disappeared. At the same time, costs for labor and supplies have risen. Adding on to these financial pressures is the recent rise in the number of RSV cases. According to a…

Where is the US experimenting with Global Capitation?

Many people believe that the US is a fee-for-service system and many European countries are more likely to use global capitation reimbursement for providers. Those who dislike fee-for-service claim it incentivize over-treatment and disincentives prevention and use terms like “waste” and “too expensive”. Those who dislike global capitation claim that approach leads to reduced access…

Challenges faced by rural hospitals

That is the topic of a commentary by Carroll et al. (2022) in Health Services Research. The first issue they discuss is access to care. A core challenge in rural communities is declining access to hospital care. Eight percent of rural hospitals have closed over the last decade, and closure rates have increased in recent…