Healthcare leaders attempting to regain some of the revenue lost during the COVID-19 shutdowns now face a formidable challenge. The American Hospital Association estimates that U.S. hospitals and health systems lost $202.6 billion in just the four months from March 1 through June 30—roughly $50.7 billion per month.
Many variables feed into the overall financial impact for individual healthcare organizations, of course—including geographic location, local ordinances, specialty designations,
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Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Hospitals Hit with Low Volumes, High Expenses, Poor Margins as COVID-19 Cases Mount
What You Should Know:
- October was a challenging month for hospitals and
health systems nationwide amid ongoing instability spurred by the COVID-19
pandemic, according to Kaufman Hall’s latest Hospital Flash Report.
- Margins and volumes fell, revenues flattened, and
expenses rose as COVID metrics continued to climb and some states moved to
retighten social distancing guidelines.
- As of Oct. 31, the number of daily U.S. COVID cases
reached a high of more than 90,500 and related
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NLP is Raising the Bar on Accurate Detection of Adverse Drug Events
Each year, Adverse Drug Events (ADE) account for nearly 700,000 emergency department visits and 100,000 hospitalizations in the US alone. Nearly 5 percent of hospitalized patients experience an ADE, making them one of the most common types of inpatient errors. What’s more, many of these instances are hard to discover because they are never reported. In fact, the median under-reporting rate in one meta-analysis of 37 studies was 94 percent. This is especially problematic given the negative
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COVID-19: How Can Payers Prepare for Mandates and Support Pandemic Relief Efforts
Healthcare can achieve optimum efficiency when patients are at the center of care. When patients have the necessary information to navigate their care journey, they will choose the path to high-quality care at the lowest costs. Cost-sharing and insurance premiums are rising consistently since the last decade for employer plans, which covers nearly half of the country’s population. Plan members are shouldering a part of the healthcare cost burden, so they want to keep it as low as possible. At
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Eden Health Sees Positive COVID-19 Screens Down 84%, Launches Employer Dashboard
What You Should Know:
- Eden has
surpassed 180,000 daily COVID-19 patient screeners for employers and their
workforces and has seen positive COVID-19 screenings drop 84% since it
started screening in late March.
- Isolating over 1,000 potential superspreader events to date, Eden Health adds Employer Dashboard to its Covid-19 solutions, giving HR leaders and execs a HIPAA-compliant, content-driven view into daily Covid-19 monitoring and screening results across employee
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Hospital Sustainability Demands that Revenue Integrity Move Front and Center
Razor-thin operational margins coupled with substantial and ongoing losses related to COVID-19 are culminating in a perfect storm of bottom-line issues for U.S. hospitals and health systems. A study commissioned by the American Hospital Association (AHA) found that the median hospital margin overall was just 3.5% pre-pandemic, and projected margins will stay in the red for at least half of the nation’s hospitals for the remainder of 2020.
The reality is that an increase in
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FDA Authorizes First At-Home COVID-19 Test, Results in 30 Mins or Less
What You Should Know:
- FDA approves emergency use authorization (EUA) for Lucira
Health’s all-in-one-test kit for COVID-19 self-testing at home.
- The streamlined Lucira COVID-19 All-In-One Test Kit,
which fits in the palm of a hand, extracts genetic material from the virus and
amplifies it. This process takes up to 30 minutes, but a positive test result
can be generated in as few as 11 minutes.
On late Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use
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White House Coronavrius Task Force Doubles Down on Rapid Testing Strategy
What You Should Know:
- White house coronavirus task force doubles down on rapid testing strategy to fight the coronavirus as some states say they don’t have the supplies to comply with the federal government’s advice.
- This article was originally published by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative news organization based in Washington, D.C.
The White House coronavirus task force is doubling down on part of its strategy for halting the spread of the virus:
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AstraZeneca, CCT Partner to Conduct COVID-19 Vaccine Clinical Trials in Arizona
What You Should Know:
- AstraZeneca and CCT announce a partnership to conduct
COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials in Arizona with 1,500 participants.
CCT Research (CCT), a leader in community-based, embedded clinical research, today announced its partnership with AstraZeneca to advance COVID-19 research. Together with local healthcare providers, CCT will facilitate clinical trials for the AZD1222 COVID-19 VACCINE,
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AMA Unveils 2 Vaccine-Specific CPT Codes for Coronavirus Immunizations
What You Should Know:
- The American Medical Association (AMA) published an
update to the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT®) code set that includes new
vaccine-specific codes to report immunizations for the novel coronavirus
(SARS-CoV-2).
- The new Category I CPT codes and long descriptors for the vaccine products 91300 and 91301 for better tracking, reporting, and analysis that supports data-driven planning and allocation.
The American Medical Association (AMA) today published an
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