Couple things you need to track…
First, hospital mergers and acquisitions soared in the first three months of 2024. From Fierce Healthcare…
Among the quarter’s 20 deals, four were “mega mergers” in which the smaller party had annual revenues exceeding $1 billion, per the report. This pushed total transacted revenue “near historically high levels” at $12 billion…
Kaufman Hall’s report is here.
Some of the big for-profit chains sold off lower-performing facilities; a few big not-for-profit system mergers were announced.
Unsurprisingly financials drove a lot of these deals; a lot of hospitals are on shaky financial ground while most of the big for-profits are making bank. Some not-for-profits’ numbers are improving although the sector as a whole is still struggling.
Meanwhile, giant for-profit HCA reported a big jump in earnings.
From Reuters:
HCA posted quarterly revenue of $17.34 billion, beating estimates of $16.78 billion and reported an adjusted profit of $5.36 per share for the reported quarter. Analysts on average had expected a profit of $5.01 per share, according to LSEG data.
What does this mean for you?
Facility costs are going up because not-for-profits (in general) are struggling, while for-profits (in general) are jacking up revenues.
Joe, thanks for sharing this reality with the Workers Compensation industry. Having spent few years in the “for-profit” hospital industry, I will corroborate your concern for increase in medical prices while their hyper-focus on the “bottom line” basically leads to increasing utilization of high margin medical services that many times are not correlated to true quality of care for patients and injured workers. This is why we need to push for value-based and outcome focused care rather than activity and volume based care. So far to go, but the journey has started.
Thanks for the insights and comment Michael.
I agree with your points, and would add that bundled payments for surgeries and other modern approaches to reimbursement would go a long way to helping employers and taxpayers better control facility costs.
be well – Joe