Pandemic Continues to Take Toll on Provider Financial Performance

November 02, 2021 - Labor expenses and declining patient volumes are having a significant impact on provider financial performance throughout 2021.

Hospital Volumes Declining, Healthcare Expenses Rising

Healthcare expenses continue to rise across the board as both hospitals and physician groups deal with pandemic-related impacts on financial performance, according to two new reports from healthcare consulting firm Kaufman Hall.

For hospitals, total expense per adjusted discharge was up by 2.6 percent year-to-date and 12.9 year-over-year, the firm reported in the National Hospital Flash Report for September 2021. Labor expenses also increased across all measures despite declines in patient volumes month-over-month and the number of hospital workers per patient bed, the report found using data from over 900 facilities.

Meanwhile, Kaufman Hall reported in the Physician Flash Report that physician expenses also escalated in the third quarter of 2021. Expenses exceeded the $900,000 mark because of the supply chain disruptions and higher revenue cycle costs, the firm found using data from more than 100,000 providers across specialties.

Physician expenses rose across all specialty cohorts analyzed in the report. On average, total direct expense per physician full-time equivalent (FTE) increased to $914,045 in the third quarter. That expense is up 4.4 percent from the second quarter, 13.2 percent from the third quarter of 2020, and 10.8 percent from the third quarter of 2019, which was before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. READ MORE

Teladoc’s Primary Care Model Bolsters Company’s Earnings

Telehealth company Teladoc Health launched a virtual primary care model and saw an increase in revenue and visit volume during the third quarter of 2021, according to its recent earnings report.

The company produced $521,658,000 in total revenue in Q3 2021 compared to $288,812,000 in Q3 2020, amounting to an 81 percent year-over-year growth. The company saw a 37 percent year-over-year growth for total visits in Q3 2021, going from 2,835,000 visits in Q3 2020 to 3,885,000 visits in Q3 2021.

Teladoc also saw growth in US paid membership and US visit fee-only access numbers, with 52.5 and 23.6 million members in Q3 2021, respectively. The company credited its virtual primary care service Primary360 with helping to influence the 2021 earnings.

Teladoc launched Primary360 in October 2021. The virtual program aims to increase access to primary care services, especially for patients who do not have a primary care physician. Four out of five adults do not have a consistent relationship with a primary care provider, according to Teladoc. READ MORE

Healthcare Costs Impacting Care Access for New Parents

Nearly a quarter of peripartum birthing people — people about to give birth or who have recently given birth — had an unmet healthcare need because of prohibitive patient healthcare costs, according to data in JAMA Network Open.

The study, which looked at how many peripartum people did not access care due to cost or experienced healthcare unaffordability and general financial stress, sheds further light on the out-of-pocket patient cost problem in the US.

August 2021 data from Kalorama Information revealed that out-of-pocket patient costs increased by 10 percent in 2020, with the total price tag for patient payments coming in at just shy of $500 million. And this upswing in patient financial responsibility has negative consequences; patients who can’t afford their healthcare often go without, creating serious patient access to care problems.

The team found a quarter of the patients had a current unmet medical need because of high healthcare costs; said otherwise, those women had a patient care access issue that stemmed from high healthcare costs. Another 60 percent of women said they experienced healthcare unaffordability, while 54 percent said they experienced general financial hardship. READ MORE

Employer-Sponsored Primary Care Clinics Gaining Traction

Employer-sponsored primary care clinics are a steadily growing trend among large employers and one that experts anticipate to persist as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study conducted by Mercer and the National Association of Worksite Health Centers.

Mercer fielded a survey from March to April 2021. Over 140 employers of varying sizes from 30 employees to more than 300,000 employees responded to the survey.

Almost a third of all employers with 5,000 employees or more and four out of ten employers with 20,000 employees or more stated that they had an employer-sponsored primary care clinic. The healthcare, finance, and government industries are most likely to offer an onsite or near-site primary care clinic.

Nearly two-thirds of all clinics were incorporated into the employer’s health plan. Some employers (27 percent) included clinic care as part of their population health management data by sending zero-dollar claims to their health plans. One out of five employers collected clinic fees that counted toward employees’ out-of-pocket costs. Additionally, most employers (63 percent) worked with a third party in order to run the clinic. READ MORE

Researchers Looking to Data Analytics to Tackle Long COVID

Using data analytics, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Louisiana State University (LSU), and Tulane Health Science Center researchers will investigate prevention and treatment methods for “long COVID” under a National Institutes of Health award.

The new award is part of the National Institutes of Health’s Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative, which is enrolling 30,000 to 40,000 participants over the next 12 to 18 months to study the long-term impact of COVID-19 infection.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as many as 30 percent of people infected with COVID-19 experience symptoms lasting at least a month. Based on that information, researchers said that more than 200,000 Louisiana residents could be impacted by long COVID, as well as millions of people across the United States.

The NIH-funder studies will examine data from diverse populations and include clinical information, laboratory tests, and analyses of patients in various states of recovery after COVID-19 inflection. READ MORE

Eli Lilly Drug Effective At Treating Type 2 Diabetes

Eli Lilly and Company recently announced that tirzepatide elicited superior A1C and body weight reductions from baseline in adults with type 2 diabetes with increased cardiovascular risk.

Data from the SURPASS-4 clinical trial showed that all three doses of tirzepatide, 5 milligrams, 10 milligrams, and 15 milligrams, elicited statistically significant A1C bodyweight reductions compared to insulin glargine at 52 weeks.

Ninety-one percent of participants who received the highest dose of tirzepatide achieved A1C reduction (2.58%), while only 51 percent of those who received insulin glargine achieved A1C reduction (1.44%). The highest dose of tirzepatide also evoked a bodyweight reduction of 25.8 pounds, compared to individuals treated with insulin glargine, whose body weight increased by 4.2 pounds.

Researchers also found that 15 milligrams of tirzepatide decreased total cholesterol by 5.6 percent, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol by 7.9 percent, and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol by 10.8 percent in an additional exploratory endpoint. READ MORE