Accounting & Financial Management

U.S. employers plan to continue offering health insurance plans to their employees, even in the face of rising healthcare costs and the availability of the exchanges.

South Nassau Communities Hospital CFO Mark Bogen spoke with Healthcare Finance News about risk, controlling costs and revenue challenges for his Oceanside, N.Y.-based organization.

Financial models involve a whole series of assumptions about such elements as volume, payer mix and salaries. While a health system may have historical data to work from, putting together projections for a new line of business is more difficult.

Health costs will accelerate next year, but changes in how people buy care will help keep them from attaining the speed of several years ago, PricewaterhouseCoopers says in a new report.

Many small, rural hospitals have struggled financially in recent years. But one critical access facility in Nebraska has discovered a means to financial stability and beyond.

As providers continue adjusting to the reimbursement changes wrought by the Affordable Care Act, it appears increasingly likely that hospitals will place more emphasis on collecting payments at the point of service.

The American Hospital Association is asking federal Medicare leaders to stem the practice of using sample hospital audit data to extrapolate overpayments eligible for recovery. The lack of clarity regarding standards for short patient stays has clouded the issue.

States' taxing of Medicaid managed care organizations to raise revenue for state-share Medicaid payments may be illegal, according to the HHS Inspector General. If so, this raises serious questions that could shake up MCO financing models.

One third of Pennsylvania's hospitals had negative operating margins in the 2013 fiscal year, according to the Pennsylvania Healthcare Cost Containment Council, an independent state agency. The crisis is forcing health systems to rethink organizational mergers and management.

New research suggests that accountable care organizations should make payments to patient-centered medical homes or take other steps to support them financially, since their goals are similarly transformative.