American hospitals became more productive over the past decade, a new report claims, based on rates of hospitals treating Medicare patients for heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia.
The new study in Health Affairs by John Romley and colleagues at the University of Southern California, looked at procedure rates between 2002 and 2011, examining costs, quality and severity of illness for patients suffering from those three serious illnesses.
Without factoring in trends in the acuity of patient populations, Romley and colleagues initially found that annual productivity rates fell -- -0.64 percent for heart attacks, -0.91 percent for heart failure and -0.39 percent for pneumonia -- before growing over time, possibly as a result of Recession-era growth slowdowns.
Follow Healthcare Finance on Twitter and LinkedIn.
But factoring in the severity of illnesses and related growth in treatment costs, they found that hospitals actually had a positive productivity trend, advancing 0.78 percent for heart attacks, 0.62 percent for heart failure, and 1.90 percent for pneumonia. The study relied on the data from the Medicare Provider Analysis and Review, covering more than 1 million patient says at 3,315 hospitals.
"The pattern of growth documented here suggests that in recent years, hospitals have not suffered from a so-called cost disease, where heavy reliance on labor limits opportunities for efficiencies stemming from technological improvement," the report states.
The Affordable Care Act’s Medicare reductions — of more than $225 billion through the rest of the decade — should not be hard for hospitals to adapt to, they said. "Our study finds that concerns about linking provider payment to economy-wide productivity growth may be overstated."
While the Congressional Budget Office estimated that as many as 15 percent of U.S. hospitals could struggle to break even under the ACA’s Medicare changes, there are a number of strategies provider systems are using, from scrapping outdated workforce models to giving newly-acquired physician practices more autonomy in patient care.
Twitter: @AnthonyBrino