Healthcare, Senior Living, Economics
A practice concentration within my business, H2 Healthcare, LLC, belongs to my wife who is also, the firm’s Senior Partner and co-founder and co-owner. The practice area is compliance and a strong focus within, is litigation support/expert witness/forensic nursing. My wife is frankly, one of the foremost clinical compliance (nursing) experts in the nation, supporting … Read more
Last week, in a message from LeadingAge President, Katie Smith Sloan, she wrote about the epidemic of loneliness. Her words reflected on how leaders are prone to loneliness and how the same concept or concepts were addressed by Arthur C. Brooks in his book, “Strength to Strength”. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy back in May, alerted … Read more
SNFs got a little early Christmas present yesterday when CMS announced its Final Rule (PPS) for Fiscal Year 2024 (begins October 1, 2023). Instead of a 3.7% increase as proposed in the initial rule, CMS finalized a 4% increase (plus an additional 0.3%). Back in April, I wrote about the proposed rule. That post is … Read more
Last Thursday, Senators Bob Casey (Pennsylvania), Ron Wyden (Oregon), and Chucky Grassley (Iowa) sent a letter to CMS asking that the agency “take immediate steps to strengthen the nursing home oversight system”. Their letter is a follow-up to a report from the Senate Committee on Aging, chaired by Casey, detailing a myriad of problems with … Read more
Yesterday, the second quarter GDP report (economic activity) was released. This is the initial print from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. It will see two more prints but the initial one is always the headline story. Revisions of late, tend to be down versus up (improvement). I eschew the headlines for the details as the … Read more
Lately I’ve written a fair amount (multiple articles) regarding the economic conditions in senior living/post-acute care. The current economic headwinds of rising capital costs/interest rates, labor scarcity, rising costs due to labor scarcity and commodity inflation have caused providers to rethink many operating assumptions. Margins have eroded and often, decisions about additional volume via admissions, … Read more
Yesterday, the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by .25 basis points (one quarter of on percent). The effective rate is now 5.25 to 5.50 percent. This is highest Fed Funds rate in 22 years. For the past multiple weeks, I have been writing on how the rate progress has impacted (negatively), seniors housing. … Read more
I’ve been closely watching the post-pandemic recovery of the senior care and living industries. In the past sixty days or so, I’ve written a number of articles/posts on occupancy recovery, factors impacting recovery, and factors that may further stress recovery trends. Within these posts/articles, reference material exists from sources like Fitch, National Investment Center … Read more
In a report provided by Ziegler investment bank, M&A activity in the non-profit industry segment is “up” for the first half of the year, near record levels. The report suggests the pace will continue into the second half. Compare this data to report from Levin that deal activity was down significantly in the first quarter … Read more
Last month, CMS dropped the 2024 PPS Proposed Rule for Home Health. Like all other provider segments, Proposed Rules function to address primarily payment, then other programmatic issues/rules such as quality measures, data reporting, etc. The proposals generally mirror the final rules, but tweaks do occur. The payment end, however, rarely changes much as often, … Read more