In the latest example of how healthcare companies are joining forces en masse, Franklin-based Iasis Healthcare announced today a joint venture with Aurora Health Care to build a new cancer center in Wisconsin, among other projects. Aurora, a not-for-profit healthcare provider serving communities throughout eastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois, and IASIS also are exploring a variety of other affiliations, including sharing clinical practices. Iasis, the nation's largest privately held hospital company, believes the partnership will give the company the type of scale and expertise needed to succeed amid dwindling federal reimbursement rates.
"We had a number of clients hesitate after the initial announcement of a delay by CMS," said Michael Arrigo, managing partner of consultancy No World Borders healthcare practice. "Now that the final rule has been published it removes uncertainty from the market place about ICD-10." Arrigo is not alone in finding that keeping the C-suite engaged in such a massive and expensive project—one that nonetheless had an unsolidified deadline—has been quite challenging. Leading up to Friday's announcement, the sense was prevalent that pushing the compliance date further into the future than 2014 would be damaging, if not disastrous, to the industry, particularly to those payers and providers that have already moved beyond the assessment phase of this transition.
Local officials in Texas are discussing whether to band together to expand Medicaid coverage in some of the state's biggest counties, making an end run around Gov. Rick Perry's opposition to the expanded program included in President Obama's healthcare law. For years, Texas's six most populous counties, as well as some smaller localities, have offered free or low-cost health care for uninsured residents with incomes as much as three times the federal poverty level, or about $57,000 for a family of three. The cost of the programs: about $2 billion a year.
In a move that had been anticipated since this spring, the operators of Buffalo Sheehan Health Network—the mothballed Sheehan Memorial Hospital on the city's East Side—have officially filed for Chapter 11 protection under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The 100-page petition, filed with U.S. Western District Bankruptcy Court Chief Judge Carl Bucki, showed that Sheehan had assets of $6.3 million and liabilities of $5.45 million. The bulk of the assets includes the eight acres on Michigan Avenue where the 270,000-square-foot hospital sits. The property is listed as having a $3 million book value.
Out-of-control healthcare spending is the only stimulus the Republicans can't stop. What else is there? Go out late at night in some of the darkest American cities. Whether it's Cleveland, Baltimore or St. Louis, it seems the only thing left to light up the gloom is a big hospital, shining like a 12-gated city, inlaid with MRIs like precious jewels. And for that we can give thanks to Medicare and Medicaid. Imagine Cleveland without the Cleveland Clinic, or Baltimore without Johns Hopkins. Even in Chicago, with a more diversified base, the city would seem flat without the expansion at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Rush University Medical Center—with all that hammering and sawing as they get ready for Obamacare.
The board of Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital has appointed a chief executive to run the private, nonprofit medical center, which is scheduled to open in 2014 and replace the troubled King-Drew hospital. The board appointed Elaine Batchlor, a licensed physician and longtime health administrator, to head the hospital in Willowbrook, south of Watts. Batchlor is the chief medical officer for L.A. Care, the nation's largest public health plan, where she focused on the underserved community. While at L.A. Care, she advocated for stronger use of technology in medicine and expanded access to medical care. The new facility is being built by Los Angeles County but will be run independently.