Hoosier hospitals save $22M by sparing patients harm
That’s less than one-tenth of 1 percent of what Hoosiers and their health plans spend on hospital care each year. But it’s a step in the right direction.
Health Care Costs
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Health Department report: Nurse staffing was short at IU Health Methodist
A Health Department audit found nurse staffing routinely short on two patient units at IU Health’s Methodist hospital, where nurses are trying to organize a union.
Radiologists follow FedEx with flat-rate prices. Is this the future of health care?
To satisfy patients with high-deductible health plans, Northwest Radiology has introduced flat-rate pricing for its imaging scans. It’s a centuries-old concept among postal services, but for health care, it’s revolutionary.
Hospitals hiring scribes to tame electronic medical records
A growing number of hospitals locally and nationally hiring scribes to help doctors fill out electronic medical records, which were billed as a time-saver over paper charts.
Anthem’s offer that hospitals can’t refuse
By subtly threatening the loss of patients via a new “reference lab network,” the Indianapolis-based health insurer has persuaded 63 Indiana hospitals to slash their prices for blood and tissue testing by as much as 80 percent—beyond the discounts Anthem had already negotiated with them.
Delays in care by consumers continue to cloud hospitals’ finances
Hospitals and doctors still aren’t seeing a wave of new patients because rising deductibles in patients' health plans are continuing to delay medical procedures, even though their job prospects are better than they’ve been in years.
Are nurses really overworked and underpaid?
Nurses in Indiana are underpaid, relative to their peers nationally. They are not overworked from a sheer number of hours, but the demands of hospitals nurses have spiked recently, reducing nurses’ margin for caring for patients with a human touch. For a business that competes on service and, increasingly, on price, those are big problems.
Financially fit IU Health still hoarding cash for fear of change
IU Health had one of its most profitable years ever in 2014, as it cut staff, boosted its physician office visits and improved bill collections. But it is still hoarding cash to be ready for future cuts in reimbursement as well as future building projects.
Semper Reformanda
Think we’re almost done with changes from Obamacare? Think again. Things won’t settle down any sooner than 2017, and they could actually get even wilder after that.
Babies, business and the bottom line
For years, employers have focused on preventing huge health bills that can result from their older workers. But now Leonard Hoops, the CEO of Visit Indy, is trying to get employers to focus on the costs of the youngest members of their health plans: premature babies.
Nursing homes in Indiana have more money than ever
Through partnerships with county-owned hospitals, Indiana’s nursing homes pulled in about $260 million last year in extra federal funds. That means participating nursing homes enjoyed a 10 percent bonus check.
Franciscan, poster child for Obamacare, sees 2014 profits surge fivefold
After cutting staff sharply in 2013, Franciscan enjoyed more revenue and big profits in 2014. The key question for its and other hospitals’ future is whether they can keep up these gains in productivity to handle looming payment cuts from Obamacare.
Killing obesity without coercion
Top-down culture change only works in North Korea, says the head of a group of local CEOs that is working broadly and subtly, not tyrannically, to improve Indy’s culture of eating and exercising.
Roche sees more sales success with penny-pinching hospitals
The future of U.S. health care will be about precision and parsimony. And Roche Diagnostics Corp. think its new line of DNA-level testing machines are just what the doctor ordered.
Need a price check on that MRI? Community now wants you to call
Getting upfront price estimates from hospitals has been a nightmare for consumers, but hospitals are starting to give them out more often. Community Health Network is even promoting its price-estimating service on its website.
Analysis: Nursing home moratorium would yield smaller-than-expected savings
The Legislative Services Agency predicts a three-year ban on new skilled nursing beds would save the state $2.2 million—not the $24.6 million reported by the state in December.
Cheapest Obamacare plan stealing exchange customers from Anthem
A sleepy season for Obamacare sign-ups will end on Sunday will overall enrollment almost exactly where insurers predicted it would be. But low-priced plans, such as Ohio-based CareSource, have scooped up far more customers than expected.
More of St. Vincent’s profits ‘ascending’ to its owner
St. Vincent’s operations produced a healthy profit margin of 10 percent last year, but nearly half of that money—$134 million—was shipped to Ascension Health, St. Vincent’s parent organization. That’s nearly 5 percent of what Hoosiers and their health plans pay for care at St. Vincent each year.
Potential IU Health-Eskenazi partnership clouded by personalities, politics
Leaders of the IU Health hospital system have discussed recently, according to multiple sources, whether a closer partnership with Eskenazi Hospital might be just what the doctor ordered.
HIP 2.0 approval means 40,000 Hoosiers must end their Obamacare coverage
An estimated 40,000 Hoosiers who already bought health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges now must end those plans and enroll in the expanded Healthy Indiana Plan. Otherwise, they’ll be on the hook to pay back thousands of dollars in Obamacare tax credits.