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Physician Enterprise Performance
November 2014
As the healthcare industry continues to embrace the trend toward employed physicians, an external perspective and relevant benchmarks can be beneficial in assessing the comparative performance of your practices. While hospitals and health systems will continue to strategically acquire physician practices, individual hospital trends will not always document that growth because employed providers may be organizationally located in different companies, and the financials will not be shown as part of hospital operations. Still, the physician enterprise will represent a growing percentage of total operating expense for the integrated delivery system. Introducing greater efficiencies and improved productivity to the physician enterprise is critical to the financial health of the organization.
The tax on high-cost health plans, which are often referred to as Cadillac plans, is expected to impact a considerable share of the plans provided by healthcare organizations for their own employees, as much as 39% by 2020. The implications are significant because the excess-benefits tax requires the employer to pay 40% on the value of the portion of the plan that exceeds thresholds set by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Employers also need to consider that the tax is measured as a direct function of plan cost, and not actuarial plan value, and that a number of factors can drive excise-tax exposure.
Healthcare providers can deliver much more effective care if they have an understanding of the characteristics, attitudes, and self-reported health status of a patient's age group. By communicating effectively and delivering care in a manner that resonates with that particular group of patients, healthcare providers can strive to achieve better outcomes and higher patient satisfaction.
