Articles
Financial Management
Hospital Financial Health: A Rocky Recovery
Emerging research has confirmed what hospitals and health systems have been saying again and again and again – that 2022 was among the most financially challenging year the hospital field has experienced, and that recovery remains challenging.
Commercial Insurer Accountability, Setting the Record Straight
CBO’s Proposals Do Not Address The Real Causes of Rising Commercial Health Insurance Premiums
By Molly Smith - Group Vice President for Public Policy, American Hospital Association, Benjamin Finder
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released a paper that includes several policy options ostensibly intended to reduce health insurance premiums.
Cost Management
Blog: RAND 4.0 Still Riddled with Methodology Flaws and Incomplete Data
By Aaron Wesolowski - AHA Vice President of Policy, Research, Analytics and Strategy, Benjamin Finder
The RAND Corporation’s latest hospital price report is, unfortunately, more of the same.
Medicare, Population/Community Health, Telling the Hospital Story
Four Reasons Medicare Is an Inadequate Benchmark for Commercial Health Plans
Researchers are off base when they claim the rate Medicare pays hospitals and health systems for services is an appropriate benchmark for commercial insurance rates.
Billing & Collections, Health Insurance
Blog: CBO’s Report on Hospital and Physician Prices Raises More Questions than it Answers
The Congressional Budget Office recently published a report that compares prices for hospital and physicians services paid by commercial insurers and fee-for-service Medicare.
Mergers & Acquisitions
The echo chamber propagates the same old same old for hospital mergers: we can do better.
By Melinda Hatton, Aaron Wesolowski - AHA Vice President of Policy, Research, Analytics and Strategy, Benjamin Finder
Hospital mergers are worth discussing, but too often the criticism is far from rigorous and is more like an echo chamber where critics cite those with whom they agree and ignore inconvenient facts that show how the hospital field continues provide quality care in their communities.
Mergers & Acquisitions, Quality Measures
Another flawed article on hospital consolidation gets undeserved attention
By Melinda Hatton, Aaron Wesolowski - AHA Vice President of Policy, Research, Analytics and Strategy, Benjamin Finder
Chief among the flaws in the most recent study on hospital consolidation published in the New England Journal of Medicine was that its conclusions were informed by preconceived notions of what the authors thought the data should show, which was then undermined further by the arbitrary choices made in comparing hospitals. Unfortunately, the media, once again, failed to closely examine the conclusions, in many instances exaggerating or misrepresenting the findings to manufacture attention-grabbing headlines.