Health Lawyers Release Top 10 List

The American Health Lawyers Association released its list of the top 10 healthcare issues for 2018. Not surprisingly, healthcare reform and the status and future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) came in first. Emergency preparedness, telemedicine and digital health and the opioid epidemic also made the list. The full list appears below, followed by […]

M&A: Study Shows Slower Financial Improvement for Acquired Hospitals

Hospitals and health systems, looking for economies of scale and the potential for reducing the cost of care, have increasingly taken the merger and acquisition (M&A) route. In partnership with the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, HFMA conducted a study of more than 750 merger transactions between 2008 and 2014 to examine how M&A affects […]

Update on Tax Reform Bill

iProtean, now part of Veralon staff will be celebrating the holidays over the next two weeks. We hope you will celebrate as well! Enjoy your holiday season.   Very little has changed in the tax reform bill from our report in late November. Here is a summary.   Republicans have agreed to preserve tax-exempt, municipal […]

Bolstering Your Strategic Plan

(Source: Veralon, a healthcare consulting company providing services in strategic planning, mergers & acquisitions, healthcare valuation and physician compensation, and clinical transformation and value-based payment. Dan Grauman, an iProtean, now part of Veralon expert who appears in many iProtean, now part of Veralon courses, is the managing director and CEO.)   In addition to setting […]

Potential Challenges to Tax-Exempt Status for NFP Hospitals

“As the Trump administration moves to reform the federal tax code, the country’s tax-exempt hospitals are bracing for potential challenges to their not-for-profit (NFP) status, with billions of dollars in federal taxes at stake,” according to the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) in an article released last week.   NFP hospitals face increased scrutiny from […]

Social Determinants of Health Gain Importance Through Population Health

Economists estimate that 80 percent of all the cost of health care relate to social determinants of health. These include everything from exercise and healthy diet and healthy weight, to avoiding substance abuse and/or other self-destructive behaviors, to ensuring that people have adequate nutrition and housing. Those are big social issues that hospitals and health […]

MACRA Made Simple

(The following includes excerpts from our upcoming course, Strategic Issues for Boards, as well as information that didn’t make the cut.)   MACRA creates two different tracks for clinicians to participate in Medicare. One is called the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System, or MIPS. The second is the Advanced Alternative Payment Model (AAPM). Each of these […]

Elements for Defense Against Information Breaches

To protect against cyber attacks, an organization should have an enterprise risk management program that has three layers of defense: information security, internal audit and risk management. These layers complement one another.   The information security group has a large swath of IT related issues to cover. The internal audit group will help the information […]

Survey Shows Lack of Knowledge About MACRA

About half of hospital-based physicians said they were not knowledgeable about the Medicare physician pay overhaul (Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015—MACRA) that began earlier this year, according to a recent survey by KPMG and the American Medical Association. This represents a larger share compared with physicians in other settings.   The survey […]

Moody’s: NFP Hospitals Should Focus on Risk Management

The ability to implement effective strategies to minimize risk will become increasingly important in determining not-for-profit and public hospitals’ credit strength in the changing landscape. These hospitals are focused on risk management to avoid pitfalls and capitalize on new opportunities in anticipation of momentous changes, not the least of which is the fate of the […]