Community Benefit
HCA's bet on walk-in clinics in a bustling metropolitan area is the latest evidence of the urgent need to improve and diversify the customer experience.
Like healthcare facilities across the country, Louisiana's hospitals must confront formidable financial challenges as care delivery models evolve and reimbursement mechanisms change.
Beginning in the 1970s, the conversion of nonprofit healthcare organizations to for-profit status created many new foundations. Soon, in the wake of the Affordable Care Act, even more "conversion" foundations will be created, resulting from what some have termed a "merger frenzy."
As healthcare's trade winds blow towards more consolidation, some nonprofit health systems are taking a new business turn, while trying to continue traditional charitable missions.
For U.S. community health centers, the recent announcement of $295 million in Affordable Care Act funding was welcome news. But the five-year period of mandatory ACA funding expires next September, meaning CHCs face a reduction of up to 70 percent in grant funding.
California's lingering backlog of Medi-Cal applications has left hundreds of thousands of people unable to access the healthcare they are entitled to receive, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
As more Americans gain insurance under the federal health law, hospitals are rethinking their charity programs, with some scaling back help for those who could have signed up for coverage but didn't.
Hospitals in states that have expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act are already bringing in fewer self-pay and charity care patient cases, according to an analysis by the Colorado Hospital Association.
Hospitals in Georgia have struggled financially in recent years, as uncompensated care costs rose after the recession and the state rejected Medicaid expansion. But one standalone facility decided that affiliation and clinical integration might be the right path to stave off closure.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of healthcare reform's expansion of insurance coverage to more than 13 million people this year has been the nation's safety-net hospitals. At least in the states that have chosen to accept the Medicaid expansion.