Healthcare, Senior Living, Economics
The following is a summary of the major provisions in the recently passed health care reform bill. Please note: I have not attempted to cover every nuance in detail but to provide a highlight for a point of reference. If any reader has additional questions or wants additional insight on any particular provision, please let … Read more
Last week I wrote about hospitals using “observation stays” as a means of dealing with the potential risk of reimbursement penalties imposed by CMS for certain re-admissions. The focus of my post was on how the trend of hospitals using observation stays to avoid CMS scrutiny (and penalties) was impacting Medicare admissions at SNFs. I … Read more
An issue that I am fielding a fair number of inquiries about lately involves Medicare patients spending more than three days in a hospital, subsequently ‘discharged’ to a SNF and the SNF learning later that the patient was never technically admitted to the hospital. Mostly, the inquiries I am getting are along the line of “what’s … Read more
On a fairly routine basis, I run across SNF Administrators and Directors of Nursing that continue to have issues with hospice patients in their facilities but not from the standpoint of the patient typically; from the standpoint of dealing with the Hospice and the terms of the contract between the Hospice and the SNF. In … Read more
This weekend, the House is reportedly set to vote on their version of healthcare reform – H.R. 3962. The bill is a “monster”; nearly 2,000 pages long. The title belies the fact that the Bill doesn’t just attempt to create “affordable health care” – it goes much, much further. For example, embedded within the hundreds of … Read more
Healthcare is a risky business; particularly in heavily regulated environments such as nursing homes and home health and hospice. The fact that a certain level of risk is omnipresent means that the opportunity constantly exists for an organization that improperly identifies and manages its risks, to suffer expensive damages ranging from financial loss to loss … Read more
In our annual Healthcare Leadership Labor Market Report released in July, we presented some rather alarming trends regarding the long-term care and post-acute care industry’s retention of nursing executives. For example, we noted that 71% of the Directors of Nursing in nursing homes leave their positions each year. We also noted that the average tenure … Read more
According to the most recent release of the Dealmakers Forum published by Irving Levin Associates, July witnessed a sizable increase in transaction volume across the long-term care sector. As I noted in my last post on Assisted Living and Senior Housing, we have begun to see some volume pick-up in these segments although modest in … Read more
What looks like the beginning to a rough late-summer/early-fall period, there are now numerous pending and current policy and reimbursement events that are breaking in the SNF industry. From the July 31 CMS announcement regarding Medicare payment reductions to the release of the marked-up House Tri-Committee bill on Health Care Reform (HR 3200) on the … Read more
In the past month or so I have had a lot of conversations with various entities ranging from providers to investors about the financial state of the industry. The majority of the discussions have been around all things financial – reimbursement in particular and as this topic goes, so goes expenses. Understandably the economic and … Read more