Recognizing that more and more Hoosier patients are trying to shop for health care, the Indiana Hospital Association has created a web tool with price and quality information for all hospitals around the state. But bigger changes to the health care system will be needed before consumers have the kind of information they expect in other industries.
The state Medicaid program will pay $24 million more due to the nursing home building boom that occurred in 2014, according to an analysis by accounting firm Myers & Stauffer. The nursing home industry will use that figure to once again argue for halt to new construction.
Five Indianapolis-area hospitals stand to lose more than $7 million in Medicare payments as a penalty for having rates of infections and patient injuries that run higher than most hospitals nationwide.
In health care, 5 percent of patients account for 50 percent of costs. Trouble is, those patients aren’t the same from year to year. Not even close.
The federal government has spent $27 billion—and hospital systems have spent even more—to roll out electronic medical records across the industry. But even advocates say the results have been “disappointing.”
Medicare will reduce payments to 68 Indiana hospitals—a 62-percent increase from last year—for having too many patients return within 30 days.
As local hospitals try to offer package deals with upfront prices on joint replacement surgeries, they're struggling with the reality that patients' other health conditions can significantly increase their cost of care.
In two to three years, primary care clinics could be popping up in Walmart stores in rural Indiana while most rural Indiana hospitals will offer little to no inpatient services. That’s dramatically different from what we’re used to.
Indiana University Health fell off U.S. News’ honor roll of the nation’s top 1 percent of hospitals. Because of Obamacare and other trends, perhaps IU Health should be happy about that.
All of sudden, Hoosiers are buying less health care. Is that because we’ve kicked the habit, sobered up and found religion? Or is it the Great Recession hangover that will pass, eventually, so we can all get back to the party?
A new study found that common blood tests performed by hospital-owned facilities in the Indianapolis area were six to nine times more expensive than the same tests at independent lab facilities. Ouch!
Strand Diagnostics LLC’s Know Error test uses DNA analysis to make sure a tissue sample that has been declared cancerous does, indeed, belong to the patient doctors think it does. But Strand is having trouble convincing Medicare that the test is medically necessary.
Since hospitals lose money on just about every patient except those with private insurance, they have been closing inner-city facilities and opening new facilities in the suburbs for the past four decades.
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.
Indiana ranks 10th in the nation for the highest spending on health care and 10th in the nation for the number of adults missing six or more teeth. That’s not a coincidence. Hoosiers do a poor job of taking care of themselves, and we end up paying for it in higher taxes and health insurance premiums.
Getting everyone into the same room prior to surgeries is cutting costs and improving health.
On the eve of Obamacare, almost no central Indiana hospitals were having trouble making money. Hip replacements, heart surgery and Hamilton County were the biggest drivers of profits.
Data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services show that a total of nearly 230,000 Indiana residents were eligible to enroll in a marketplace plan, but only about 132,000 had done so by the March 31 deadline.
Until doctors and hospitals make a whole lot more headway—or, perhaps, more accurately, are allowed to make more headway—in offering package deals, it’s hard to see major progress on containing out-of-control health care costs.
The typical hospital around the country will see its profits wiped out entirely by the changes coming from health reform and the aging of the population. But in Indianapolis, the hits will be cushioned by this region's fatter commercial reimbursements.
