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A new KFF analysis examines how new federal rules on price transparency for health services may affect patient decision-making and market pricing. As of January 1, 2021, the United States Department of Health and Human Services requires that hospitals publish payer-negotiated rates for common services on their websites.
Safety-net hospitals are an integral part of the U.S. health care landscape, providing care to some of the nation’s most medically vulnerable populations, including Medicaid enrollees and the uninsured. With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the U.S. health care system is rapidly changing, and safety-net hospitals need to make major adjustments to survive in the post-reform environment. This brief draws on interviews with executives at nine safety-net hospital systems and examines how their hospitals have fared since major coverage provisions of the ACA came into effect in January 2014. The brief also examines new and ongoing strategies that the hospitals are adopting in the face of a quickly changing health care environment. While acknowledging the importance of the ACA, executives at each system in the study noted that other non-ACA related factors have also shaped how their hospitals fared over the last year. The hospitals in the study were: Cook County Health and Hospital System (CCHHS); Denver Health (Denver Health); Harris Health System (Harris Health); New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC); Parkland Health and Hospital System (Parkland); Santa Clara Valley Health and Hospital System (SCVHHS); San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH); University Medical Center of Southern Nevada (UMC), and Virginia Commonwealth University Health System (VCU). These hospitals participated in two earlier related studies that examined how the systems were preparing for health care reform.
This is an update on the use of Medicaid provider taxes and fees. It also includes information on which states would be affected by changing the safe harbor threshold from 6% to 5.5%.
Expanded health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is having a major impact on hospital payer mix across the country. Similar to other reports recently released, new data examining hospital discharges in 16 states with data through the second quarter in 2014 show increases in Medicaid and declines in uninsured or self-pay discharges in states that implemented the Medicaid expansion. These trends hold true for all hospital discharges as well as for specific services such as mental health or asthma. This information adds to a growing body of evidence indicating that coverage expansions are affecting providers and may lead to decreases in uncompensated care for the uninsured.
Changes to Medicaid funding, eligibility and enrollment could impact hospital finances. These interactive 50-state maps show the number of hospital employees by state and how hospital employment ranks among industry subsectors. Hospitals employed 6.7 million people in 2023, and more than 100,000 people in each of 23 states.
This analysis examines transparency data currently shared by hospitals to comply with federal law and finds that they are messy, inconsistent and confusing, making it challenging if not impossible for patients or researchers to use them to compare prices. Many of these shortcomings stem from a lack of specificity in the requirements for what hospitals must report.
Rural hospitals fared worse financially in states that have not expanded their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act than in states that expanded Medicaid, a new KFF analysis finds.
The latest data on U.S. health spending are now available on the Health Spending Explorer, an interactive tool that allows users to explore trends in health spending by federal and local governments, insurers, nursing care, hospital, and other service providers, and consumers.
This analysis examines the cost of COVID-19 treatment for inpatient care among people with health coverage through large employers. It finds that in 2020, COVID-19 hospitalizations cost an average of $41,611, including an average out-of-pocket payment of $1,280 for people with large employer coverage.
Despite higher inflation and dwindling COVID-19 relief funding from the federal government, the nation’s largest for-profit health systems so far this year have operating margins that meet or exceed levels in 2019 prior to the pandemic, a new KFF analysis finds.
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