I figured you probably knew every dumb interface option in the book, but worth a shot. Sheesh for that platform,…
Morning Headlines 12/1/23
Cigna, Humana in Talks for Blockbuster Merger
Health insurers Cigna and Humana are negotiating a merger that they hope to finalize within the next four weeks, according to insider reports.
Experian acquires Wave HDC, which captures patient insurance and demographics at registration.
HFMA and FinThrive launch a peer-reviewed, five-stage Revenue Cycle Management Technology Adoption Model, with initial analysis indicating that 42% of health systems are at Stage 1.
Cigna and Humana wanting to merge: Of course this means better patient care, lower costs for the consumer, and increased efficiency with no low level staff losing their jobs. And of course, they would never dole out huge bunuses to executives.
Cigna Humana – is anyone else worried about the mega insurance company / mega health system arms race. What are people’s thoughts. Is healthcare too big to succeed or needs to be bigger to accommodate all the change? Do patients need to lower their expectations? Should doctors just check in & check out like other employees? Bigger? Smaller? Hybrid?
As a patient, I’m willing to lower my expectations if I wasn’t paying 2k a month for healthcare. Americans love to rag on the high Euro taxes but if you consider healthcare costs a tax, we’re paying in the same ballpark rate wise.
For significantly worse outcomes!
We badly need anti-trust enforcement in the healthcare provider space. There have been ample investigative reports demonstrating that these mergers are happening so that the resulting organizations can corner regional markets and jack up the rates for services to increase profit. The demand for most healthcare services is inelastic, and they know patients cannot easily go to cities several hours away for care. So just buy up all the practices in a metro region and take it to the bank. We should have stopped approving these mega mergers about 10 years ago.
We are a 6-month-old company looking at hospital quality from the inside out and have spent 500 hours so far asking RNs across 6 cities in the US two key questions:
1. Do you recommend the hospital you work to your loved ones for care?
2. Do you recommend the hospital you work to other RNs for work?
Then, we use the publicly available plan specific pricing data to determine opportunities for the real payers of healthcare, employers/employees, to find better care at lower prices. The stories we have from nurses add ‘color commentary’ to CMS Quality, HCAHPS and even Leapfrog scores. For example, In Kansas City we found that the HCA facilities cost 51% MORE and had significantly lower quality than Saint Luke’s and North Kansas City Hospital. RNs at Menorah Medical Center told us that care is unsafe, patients are waiting in inpatient beds for surgeries that won’t be done on a weekend, and that the veterans have left, leaving brand new nurses to be trained by RNs with just 1-2 years of experience. In fact, 55.4% of the RNs working at Menorah don’t recommend it to their loved ones, they go elsewhere. 2 stars and a “B” safety rating don’t exactly suss that out very well.
Would you eat at a restaurant where the chef won’t?