Strategic Planning

Medicare's accountable care organizations have gotten off to a mixed start, with hospital-led ACOs especially reporting financial challenges. By contrast, physician-led ACOs may have built-in advantages, and could be a new source of competition.

The Federal Trade Commission's blocking of hospital and physician practice mergers, as a way to purportedly prevent monopolies, is hurting the very people the FTC claims to be helping -- the patients themselves.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has announced the first group of prospective winners of its Health Care Innovation Awards. The winners could receive receive $2 million to $18 million each over three years for trying innovative care models.

With the Massachusetts Attorney General granting Partners Healthcare System a long-term lease on life as the dominant provider in Eastern Massachusetts, it's almost certain that the state and its residents will continue to pay above-average healthcare costs.

Hospital ownership of physician practices appears to lead to statistically and economically significant increases in hospital prices and spending, according to a recent study published in Health Affairs. But that doesn't mean providers should retreat from integration and tighter alignment.

Disasters, natural and man-made, threaten more than hospital property. With many healthcare information technology systems integrated and focused on patient care, the threat of an IT or communications shutdown can be both dangerous to patients and costly to the health system.

Hospitals confront extraordinary challenges in the aftermath of a natural disaster. These risks seem to have enlarged in recent years, and can shut down hospital operations, temporarily or entirely. Consequently, many hospitals have upgraded their business continuity planning.

If global spending becomes the norm in Medicaid, health systems, medical practices, home health and community organizations will face an even greater impetus to collaborate. In the Empire State, some are already starting the journey.

Almost a third of all hospitalizations now treat diabetic patients, and cost more than average. Diabetic admissions may be a problem that regulators, ACOs and providers need to solve for the long-term.

According to a study published this week in Health Affairs, the Great Recession did not have a permanent negative financial impact on vulnerable hospitals, such as safety net facilities, or those considered financially weak prior to the recession. However, this doesn't mean these same hospitals will fare so well in coming years.