Despite a swiftly changing healthcare environment and uncertainty over how Tennessee may expand its Medicaid program under federal guidelines, Chattanooga hospitals are pouring millions of dollars into renovations, updated technology and building expansions. The three largest systems—Erlanger, Memorial Health Care and Parkridge—significantly have increased their capital budgets this year. For the first time in about a decade, Erlanger is spending more in capital projects this year than the amount of its equipment and facilities depreciated, said Joe Winick, senior vice president of strategic planning.
Exeter Hospital is asking a superior court judge to temporarily block attorneys from using their legal powers to request documents and information about the hepatitis C outbreak at the facility. Exeter Hospital is named in 25 lawsuits filed in Rockingham Superior Court by former patients who now carry the liver disease. That includes a class-action lawsuit filed by Concord attorney Peter McGrath, whose clients now include 147 former Exeter Hospital patients. A handful have tested positive for the disease. The remainder either received a negative test result or are awaiting more information.
Municipal bonds sold by hospitals and healthcare providers are rallying the most since 2009, defying a potential $11 billion drop in Medicare funding from federal budget cuts that loom in three months. Healthcare bonds have gained 9.5 percent this year and hospital debt 9.1 percent, making them the best-performing revenue securities, Standard & Poor's indexes show. The segments are beating the broader $3.7 trillion muni market by the most in three years. The rally is poised to continue as Federal Reserve efforts to hold down interest rates spur investors to add relatively risky, higher-yielding assets.
Los Angeles billionaire and healthcare entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong reached an agreement with insurer Blue Shield of California aimed at accelerating medical breakthroughs to doctors and patients to improve care and reduce costs. Soon-Shiong, a former UCLA surgeon and drug-company executive, announced the deal Tuesday between his NantHealth company and Blue Shield, a nonprofit insurer with 3.3 million customers in California. They will partner with St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica to create a "continuous learning center" to work on spreading personalized medicine and best practices to more healthcare providers.
Insurer Highmark Inc. filed suit in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court today for a temporary restraining order "to prevent [West Penn Allegheny Health System] from starting affiliation or acquisition discussions with other organizations." Highmark also said that it wants to protect the sizable monetary investment, hundreds of millions in loans and grants, that it has already made in the financially ailing health system. The legal filing comes three days—and one business day—after West Penn Allegheny caught Highmark off guard with the Friday morning announcement that it would be trying to break off its affiliation agreement with Highmark.
One of the strangest aspects of the 2012 presidential campaign is that President Obama has barely bothered to make the case for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Mitt Romney has only rarely summoned the will to make the case against it. This is despite the fact that ACA is arguably the most consequential domestic policy legislation since 1965, when President Johnson presided over the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. The foundations of America's patchwork health system are unraveling before our eyes, and conservatives need to make the case for a more cost-effective reform sooner rather than later.