Tag: hospitals

Small Town and Rural Hospitals Are at Risk of Closing due to Funding

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://angrybearblog.com/2023/06/107367

pdf report: https://chqpr.org/downloads/Rural_Hospitals_at_Risk_of_Closing.pdf

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Things are changing more rapidly. Smaller hospitals are under an attack of high costs and less revenue. As a result, many are closing leaving the small town and rural residents without medical care or having to drive long distances in emergencies. As reported by Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform:

Many people across the country could not receive hospital care in their community when the pandemic began. Over 150 rural hospitals closed between 2005 and 2019. An additional 19 rural hospitals closed in 2020, more than any year in the previous decade. The closures are not resulting from the pandemic, but by financial losses in previous years. Ten more rural hospitals closed in 2021 and 2022. The closures decreased in 2019 due to the special financial assistance hospitals received during the pandemic. The pandemic aid has ended and closures are likely to increase.

Hundreds of Hospitals are at Risk of Closing

Six hundred rural hospitals or ~ 30% of all rural hospitals in the country are at risk of closing. At risk because of the serious financial problems, they are experiencing:

Author(s): Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform

Publication Date: 7 Jun 2023 on blog, accessed 14 Jun 2023

Publication Site: Angry Bear Blog

Monopsony in Professional Labor Markets: Hospital System Concentration and Nurse Wage Growth

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/monopsony-in-professional-labor-markets-hospital-system-concentration-and-nurse-wage-growth

Graphic:

PDF of working paper: https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/WP_197-Allegretto-HospCons.pdf

Excerpt:

Rolling waves of consolidation have significantly decreased the number of hospital systems in the U.S., leading to dominant regional systems. Increased concentration potentially affects industry quality, prices, efficiency, wages, and more. Much of the consolidation research is focused on merger events and estimating effects on the merged entities. In contrast, our new working paper is not based simply on merger data but takes account of the overall increase in consolidation across the country without respect to cause.

Specifically, we use the intensity of changes in hospital system consolidation in metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) over two periods to estimate its effect on the wage growth of higher-earning professional workers—in this case registered nurses. We focus on registered nurses as a homogeneous group of workers with some degree of industry-specific education and skills. Registered nurses represent the largest single occupational classification in hospitals and urgent care centers, representing one in four workers.

Understanding the dynamics of local healthcare labor markets is critical given the importance of the sector for the U.S. economy; even more so in the wake of the pandemic amid continued uncertainty around long-term effects (e.g., early retirements, career shifts, education delays). Moreover, labor shortages among hospital-based nurses, which may be a symptom of monopsony, have been endemic in the industry for many years. The wages of nurses were stagnant between 1995 and 2015 despite increasing demand for healthcare over the same timeframe even as it was the only sector that added employment during the Great Recession. Explanations for the stagnation of nurse wages—in one of the more highly unionized professional occupations in the country—are not readily apparent.

Author(s): Sylvia Allegretto and Dave Graham-Squire

Publication Date: 19 Jan 2023

Publication Site: Institute for New Economic Thinking

How Much Does a C-Section Cost? At One Hospital, Anywhere From $6,241 to $60,584.

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-much-does-a-c-section-cost-at-one-hospital-anywhere-from-6-241-to-60-584-11613051137

Excerpt:

When a woman gets a caesarean section at the gleaming new Van Ness location of Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center, the price might be $6,241. Or $29,257. Or $38,264. It could even go as high as $60,584.

The rate the hospital charges depends on the insurance plan covering the birth. At the bottom end of the scale is a local health plan that serves largely Medicaid recipients. At the top are prices for women whose plans don’t have the San Francisco hospital in their insurers’ network.

The nation’s roughly 6,000 hospitals have begun to reveal the secret rates they negotiate with insurers for a range of procedures. The data offer the first full look inside the confidential deals that set healthcare rates for insurers and employers covering more than 175 million Americans. The submissions also illuminate how widely prices vary—even for the same procedure, performed in the same facility—depending on who is paying.

Author(s): Anna Wilde Mathews, Tom McGinty and Melanie Evans

Publication Date: 11 February 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal