Before local hospitals slashed staff and expenses last year, they had been boosting the pay packages of their top executives faster than hospitals around the country. Seven of every 10 senior executives at the major hospital systems in Indianapolis saw their total compensation rise more than 10 percent from 2010 to 2012.
Indianapolis hospitals have begun to offer joint replacement surgeries to employers and insurers using “bundled prices.” That means, instead of billing piecemeal for each individual service and supply, the hospitals wrap everything needed from just before to just after surgery into a package deal.
Indiana University Health was chosen by a hospital system in Wisconsin to provide heart, lung, esophagus and aorta surgeries there after the surgeons the hospital system had been using became employed by a competing provider.
Indiana University Health’s business deteriorated last year in nearly every area. But price hikes and a surge in outpatient visits to Indianapolis-area facilities mostly offset those problems.
The new two-year agreement gives UnitedHealthcare discounted rates retroactive to Jan. 1. Such discounts, which insurers negotiate with hospital systems, reduce prices 30 percent or more.
In spite of offers to strike a short-term extension, UnitedHealthcare and Indiana University Health are still hung up in contract negotiations on one key point: Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare wants to create a multi-tiered network of providers and services that would offer the lowest co-pays and deductibles for favored hospital systems—which IU Health is not.
Jim Terwilliger had led IU Health’s two flagship hospitals since July 2012, when longtime executive Sam Odle retired. The CEO of Riley Hospital for Children will replace him temporarily.
IU Health has decided to still give patients the same “in network” co-pays and deductibles that UnitedHealthcare had negotiated under the expiring contracts, keeping patients’ costs the same until a new deal is reached.
Indiana University Health, already the state’s largest hospital system, is now ramping up to compete against Anthem, UnitedHealthcare and other health insurers.
IU Health, the state’s fourth-largest employer, said it was opposing a proposed amendment against same-sex marriage for health-related reasons.
For years, the county-owned hospitals ringing Indianapolis have watched warily as the city’s four major hospital systems used their superior size and resources to push ever outward into the suburbs.
Indiana University Health now says it will cut more than 900 jobs in a reorganization. That's at least 100 more than announced nearly three weeks ago.
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield President Rob Hillman expects a slow start to the Obamacare exchanges, with fewer than one-third of uninsured people buying coverage there.
Most of Indianapolis’ major hospitals and physician practices will not be available through Anthem’s exchange plan, but instead will be working with a health plan run by Indianapolis-based MDwise Inc.
Admissions at Indiana University Health hospitals suddenly dipped 4.3 percent this year, but income from operations shot up 19 percent.
The Indianapolis-based hospital system said Thursday it must make the cuts because fewer patients have been coming to hospitals and payment rates for its services have been declining.
US HealthWorks Medical Group, which specializes in workers’ compensation cases, agreed in May to acquire the eight clinics. The deal is expected to close before the end of June.
Aggressive construction wiped out historical territories, thus opening the door to insurers playing hospitals off each other.
Even though Obamacare likely will expand health insurance coverage to an extra 500,000 Hoosiers over the next few years, IU Health expects per-patient reimbursements to fall as the federal government, employers and patients all push back on sky-high health care costs.
The recent flurry of big announcements portends well.
