Indianapolis Business Journal gathered leaders in the state's health care and benefits sector for a Power Breakfast panel discussion Sept. 26. The panel discussed disruption of employer clinics, health care spending and more.
As the chief executive officers of the four largest health systems in central Indiana, we understand the dire situation facing hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers who lack health insurance.
Community executives said the investment and projects, which will begin this fall and extend over several years, prove their long-term commitment to the east side of the city.
Franciscan Alliance, which operates three hospitals in the Indianapolis area, is seeing fewer patients this year but is making more money due to expense cuts.
While the biggest hospital profit margins are made in the suburbs, the biggest pile of cash—$353 million in 2012—is made at the three downtown campuses run by Indiana University Health. In fact, those hospitals generated 32 percent of all operating gains posted by central Indiana hospitals in 2012.
Getting everyone into the same room prior to surgeries is cutting costs and improving health.
Community brought in more revenue and profit from operations last year. But a spike in charity care caused margins to fall significantly short of expectations of Community executives.
Lost in all the rhetoric about the Affordable Care Act—website glitches, recriminations and cries for “repeal and replace”—it’s easy to forget the near-universal agreement that today’s health care environment is fragmented and inefficient.
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.
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield has signed a new kind of contract with the Franciscan Alliance hospital system that allows Franciscan to make more money only if it saves money for Anthem.
Advancements in Health Care Finalists
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.
Tom Fischer, the chief financial and chief operating officer of Community Health Network, departed suddenly this month. Sources with knowledge of the situation described Fischer’s exit as a firing. But a Community spokeswoman said Fischer resigned in a private meeting with Community CEO Bryan Mills.
IU Health, the state’s largest hospital system, and UnitedHealthcare, the state’s second-largest health insurer, have been unable to come to terms on a new set of reimbursement contracts.
Indiana University Health, already the state’s largest hospital system, is now ramping up to compete against Anthem, UnitedHealthcare and other health insurers.
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.
The Indiana-based system that operates three hospitals in the Indianapolis area said it is trying to cut its expenses by as much as $500 million, or 20 percent.
Franciscan St. Francis Health earned a $6.6 million bonus from the Medicare program for its success at keeping central Indiana patients out of the hospital and the emergency room. So the hospital system will expand its participation in so-called accountable care programs to all its Indiana territories.
