Despite Relief Funds, One-Third of Hospitals Eye Expected Losses

September 23, 2021 - While pandemic relief funds may have enabled leading hospitals to weather the storm of COVID-19, quite a few hospitals anticipate significant losses during the second year of the pandemic.

Hospital Losses Expected to Eclipse $54B in 2021

Hospitals are estimated to lose $54 billion in net income this year despite receiving federal aid to offset revenue losses and added expenses from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a new report reveals. More than a third of US hospitals are estimated to maintain negative operating margins through the year’s end as expenses continue to be higher than pre-pandemic levels and fewer patients come in for outpatient visits.

Hospitals and health systems are treating sicker patients, including those infected by the coronavirus’ new variants and patients who put off care during the pandemic, the report published by the American Hospital Association (AHA) and prepared by Kaufman, Hall & Associates, LLC states.

These patients require longer hospital stays and more services than patients seen by hospitals prior to the pandemic. While this has contributed to revenue gains over the past year, the costs of treating higher acuity, inpatient cases have largely offset any income hospitals have received, the report says. READ MORE

FDA Greenlights Booster Doses for Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine

FDA recently amended the emergency use authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to allow for a single booster dose six months after completing the primary series.

In December 2020, FDA issued the first emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine to Pfizer and BioNTech, allowing for distribution across the country. And in August, the agency fully approved the vaccine, now marketed as Comirnaty.

Comirnaty is the first COVID-19 vaccine to be FDA approved. Overall, FDA concluded that a booster dose of Comirnaty may be effective in preventing COVID-19. And the known and potential benefits of a booster dose outweigh the known and potential risks. READ MORE

Epic, Cerner Lead the Way with Data Analytics Adoption

In their recent performance report, KLAS Research evaluated vendors with broad analytics offerings and allowed them to identify their deepest platform adopters.

According to the report, Cerner, Epic, and Health Catalyst saw the deepest adoption among established analytics solutions. Deep adopters of Cerner validated the adoption of 100 percent of the basic platform capabilities and 86 percent of advanced capabilities. For Epic, 100 percent of the basic capabilities have been adopted by at least one of Epic’s deep adopters. As for advanced capabilities, natural language processing and system return on investment calculation have yet to be validated.

Among the newcomers, Innovaccer has the deepest adoption and Alteryx leads in high-focus areas of functionality and outcomes. READ MORE

Telehealth Assists in Pediatric Chronic Disease Management

Using telehealth to deliver comprehensive care for children with chronic conditions is likely to reduce hospital and emergency department visits, improve patient outcomes, and decrease healthcare costs, according to researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTH).

The study found that telehealth visits were likely to reduce the number of hospital visits for medically complex children. The probability for an overall reduction was 99 percent. The probability for a reduction in serious illnesses was also high, at 95 percent. Total hospital and PICU admissions were likely to decrease as well, with 90 and 97 percent reduction probability, respectively.

Telehealth visits resulted in reduced health system costs due to the low utilization of hospital and ED services, according to the study. The use of telehealth cost the health system $33,718, whereas in-person care cost $41,281. The results identified a 91 percent probability of reduced health system costs. READ MORE

Will Expanded Medicare Coverage Lower Consumer Costs?

Policymakers are looking to include dental, hearing, and vision benefits to Medicare as a part of the budget reconciliation bill, which could benefit many Medicare beneficiaries who go without this care due to high out-of-pocket costs, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation brief.

Nearly half of all Medicare beneficiaries (44 percent) reported having difficulty hearing and over one in three (35 percent) reported difficulty with seeing in 2019. More than 80 percent of beneficiaries reported that they wear glasses or contacts and 14 percent use hearing aids. In 2018, more than half of Medicare beneficiaries (53 percent) reported using dental services in the past year, compared to the 35 percent and 8 percent who used vision and hearing services, respectively.

Some beneficiaries neglected to seek care or reported paying high out-of-pocket costs in order to access these benefits. The average out-of-pocket spending for hearing care in 2018 was $914. Dental care followed close behind with an average of $874. Around 9.5 million Medicare beneficiaries reported that at some point in 2019 they could not receive dental, vision, or hearing care. READ MORE

Online Provider Reviews Could Help Identify Racism in Medicine

Online provider reviews and patient satisfaction surveys could be good qualitative measures of racism in medicine, offering another tool for healthcare professionals working to improve health equity and patient experience, according to a research note published in JAMA Network Open.

Researchers scanned Yelp reviews for medical providers between January 2010 and January 2020, utilizing this online provider review platform because of its ubiquity in medicine and other service industries. Using natural language processing, the researchers picked out reviews containing the terms “racist” or “racism,” and assessed those reviews for whether that racism was institutional, interpersonal, or internalized.

Of the nearly 100,000 online provider reviews analyzed, the researchers found 260 explicitly referenced racism. Those reviews referred to 190 hospitals across 33 states, indicated the problem of racism in medicine is not concentrated in one single area, but rather across a number of facilities and regions. READ MORE