South Miami Medical Arts Building – Estate Investments Group | $5.8M
Estate Investments Group purchased the South Miami Medical Arts building in South Miami for $5.8 million.
The 21,455-square-foot property at 6201 Southwest 70th Street traded hands for about $270 per square foot. The seller, 6201 of Miami LLC, is tied to the construction engineering company Munilla Construction Management.
The four-story building was completed in 1972, records show.
5297 West Copans Road – Centers Health Care | $5.5M
Centers Health Care bought a nearly 33,000-square-foot, single-story office building with lake views in Margate for $5.5 million.
The seller, Northwest Broward Development LLC, is led by attorney Leigh Katzman. The property at 5297 Copans Road previously sold for $3.2 million in 2010.
Sunrise Medical Park – Marc Gordon | $5M
Sunrise Medical Park, a medical office complex consisting of five, one-story buildings, sold for $5 million to Flamingo Medical Office LLC, led by Marc Gordon.
The seller is a company tied to Levy Realty Advisors. The property at 8391-8399 West Oakland Park Boulevard last sold for $3.2 million in 2011. Tenants include Holy Cross and Tenet Hospital Groups.
Source: The Real Deal
Boca Raton-based Promise Healthcare Group LLC, a hospital and nursing home chain, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization.
In a petition filed with a Delaware bankruptcy court on Nov. 5, the company said it had debt exceeding $565 million, plus accrued and unpaid interest of $110 million, accrued expenses and accounts payable of about $94 million, and capitalized leases of about $13 million.
According to the petition, the company has hired FTI Consulting Inc. to assist in “evaluating strategic and financial alternatives to improve liquidity” and appointed FTI’s senior managing director for corporate finance and restructuring, Andrew Hinkelman, as chief restructuring officer and interim chief financial officer.
Under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a company’s debtor remains in control of the reorganizing business as it seeks restructuring and new financing.
A statement by Hinkelman to the court said Promise Healthcare, with 4,466 employees, operates 16 acute care hospitals and two skilled nursing facilities across nine states. In Florida, Promise Healthcare operates hospitals in Miami, Fort Myers and The Villages.
“While I believe that the Debtors’ overall business is fundamentally strong, the Debtors have been operating with an unsustainable balance sheet due to current industry dynamics and certain underperforming facilities within the Debtors’ portfolio,” the statement said.
The filing seeks approval of $85 million in post-bankruptcy financing from Wells Fargo Bank, which would keep the company and its properties in operation during the restructuring process.
During the bankruptcy, the company intends to sell off two of its hospitals, in Los Angeles and St. Louis, Mo., as well as real estate in San Diego, while it negotiates sale or restructuring of its remaining assets, Hinkelman’s statement says. He added that the company intends to exit the bankruptcy in six months.
According to a 2017 Sun Sentinel story, the company was founded in 2003 by Peter Baronoff, a former Boca Raton City Council member, with the goal of offering superior care for seriously ill patients. Baronoff won the Sun Sentinel Co.’s 2016 Excalibur Award for Business Leader of the Year in Palm Beach County. He resigned as the company’s CEO early this year and resigned from the board of directors in May, Hinkelman’s statement said.
Richard Gold, the company’s president and chief operating officer, resigned in July.
While net revenue increased from $489.5 million in 2015 to $512.2 million in 2016, it declined to $462.5 million in 2017 as the company reported an operating loss of $25.2 million.
Factors contributing to the bankruptcy included sharp decreases in Medicare reimbursement rates for patient stays in 2015 and 2016, the filing states, as well as “significant” investments in new business projects that have since been abandoned.
Source: SunSentinel
According to the petition, the company has hired FTI Consulting Inc. to assist in “evaluating strategic and financial alternatives to improve liquidity” and appointed FTI’s senior managing director for corporate finance and restructuring, Andrew Hinkelman, as chief restructuring officer and interim chief financial officer.
Under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a company’s debtor remains in control of the reorganizing business as it seeks restructuring and new financing.
A statement by Hinkelman to the court said Promise Healthcare, with 4,466 employees, operates 16 acute care hospitals and two skilled nursing facilities across nine states. In Florida, Promise Healthcare operates hospitals in Miami, Fort Myers and The Villages.
“While I believe that the Debtors’ overall business is fundamentally strong, the Debtors have been operating with an unsustainable balance sheet due to current industry dynamics and certain underperforming facilities within the Debtors’ portfolio,” the statement said.
The filing seeks approval of $85 million in post-bankruptcy financing from Wells Fargo Bank, which would keep the company and its properties in operation during the restructuring process.
During the bankruptcy, the company intends to sell off two of its hospitals, in Los Angeles and St. Louis, Mo., as well as real estate in San Diego, while it negotiates sale or restructuring of its remaining assets, Hinkelman’s statement says. He added that the company intends to exit the bankruptcy in six months.
According to a 2017 Sun Sentinel story, the company was founded in 2003 by Peter Baronoff, a former Boca Raton City Council member, with the goal of offering superior care for seriously ill patients. Baronoff won the Sun Sentinel Co.’s 2016 Excalibur Award for Business Leader of the Year in Palm Beach County. He resigned as the company’s CEO early this year and resigned from the board of directors in May, Hinkelman’s statement said.
Richard Gold, the company’s president and chief operating officer, resigned in July.
While net revenue increased from $489.5 million in 2015 to $512.2 million in 2016, it declined to $462.5 million in 2017 as the company reported an operating loss of $25.2 million.
Factors contributing to the bankruptcy included sharp decreases in Medicare reimbursement rates for patient stays in 2015 and 2016, the filing states, as well as “significant” investments in new business projects that have since been abandoned.
Source: SunSentinel
A statement by Hinkelman to the court said Promise Healthcare, with 4,466 employees, operates 16 acute care hospitals and two skilled nursing facilities across nine states. In Florida, Promise Healthcare operates hospitals in Miami, Fort Myers and The Villages.
“While I believe that the Debtors’ overall business is fundamentally strong, the Debtors have been operating with an unsustainable balance sheet due to current industry dynamics and certain underperforming facilities within the Debtors’ portfolio,” the statement said.
The filing seeks approval of $85 million in post-bankruptcy financing from Wells Fargo Bank, which would keep the company and its properties in operation during the restructuring process.
During the bankruptcy, the company intends to sell off two of its hospitals, in Los Angeles and St. Louis, Mo., as well as real estate in San Diego, while it negotiates sale or restructuring of its remaining assets, Hinkelman’s statement says. He added that the company intends to exit the bankruptcy in six months.
According to a 2017 Sun Sentinel story, the company was founded in 2003 by Peter Baronoff, a former Boca Raton City Council member, with the goal of offering superior care for seriously ill patients. Baronoff won the Sun Sentinel Co.’s 2016 Excalibur Award for Business Leader of the Year in Palm Beach County. He resigned as the company’s CEO early this year and resigned from the board of directors in May, Hinkelman’s statement said.
Richard Gold, the company’s president and chief operating officer, resigned in July.
While net revenue increased from $489.5 million in 2015 to $512.2 million in 2016, it declined to $462.5 million in 2017 as the company reported an operating loss of $25.2 million.
Factors contributing to the bankruptcy included sharp decreases in Medicare reimbursement rates for patient stays in 2015 and 2016, the filing states, as well as “significant” investments in new business projects that have since been abandoned.
Source: SunSentinel
The filing seeks approval of $85 million in post-bankruptcy financing from Wells Fargo Bank, which would keep the company and its properties in operation during the restructuring process.
During the bankruptcy, the company intends to sell off two of its hospitals, in Los Angeles and St. Louis, Mo., as well as real estate in San Diego, while it negotiates sale or restructuring of its remaining assets, Hinkelman’s statement says. He added that the company intends to exit the bankruptcy in six months.
According to a 2017 Sun Sentinel story, the company was founded in 2003 by Peter Baronoff, a former Boca Raton City Council member, with the goal of offering superior care for seriously ill patients. Baronoff won the Sun Sentinel Co.’s 2016 Excalibur Award for Business Leader of the Year in Palm Beach County. He resigned as the company’s CEO early this year and resigned from the board of directors in May, Hinkelman’s statement said.
Richard Gold, the company’s president and chief operating officer, resigned in July.
While net revenue increased from $489.5 million in 2015 to $512.2 million in 2016, it declined to $462.5 million in 2017 as the company reported an operating loss of $25.2 million.
Factors contributing to the bankruptcy included sharp decreases in Medicare reimbursement rates for patient stays in 2015 and 2016, the filing states, as well as “significant” investments in new business projects that have since been abandoned.
Source: SunSentinel
According to a 2017 Sun Sentinel story, the company was founded in 2003 by Peter Baronoff, a former Boca Raton City Council member, with the goal of offering superior care for seriously ill patients. Baronoff won the Sun Sentinel Co.’s 2016 Excalibur Award for Business Leader of the Year in Palm Beach County. He resigned as the company’s CEO early this year and resigned from the board of directors in May, Hinkelman’s statement said.
Richard Gold, the company’s president and chief operating officer, resigned in July.
While net revenue increased from $489.5 million in 2015 to $512.2 million in 2016, it declined to $462.5 million in 2017 as the company reported an operating loss of $25.2 million.
Factors contributing to the bankruptcy included sharp decreases in Medicare reimbursement rates for patient stays in 2015 and 2016, the filing states, as well as “significant” investments in new business projects that have since been abandoned.
Source: SunSentinel
While net revenue increased from $489.5 million in 2015 to $512.2 million in 2016, it declined to $462.5 million in 2017 as the company reported an operating loss of $25.2 million.
Factors contributing to the bankruptcy included sharp decreases in Medicare reimbursement rates for patient stays in 2015 and 2016, the filing states, as well as “significant” investments in new business projects that have since been abandoned.
Source: SunSentinel
Source: SunSentinel
You’ll hear phrases like “economies of scale” and “acquired efficiencies” and the obliquely vague “synergistic benefits.” It might make sense when talking about two small banks or mid-sized manufacturers. When it comes to hospitals and healthcare, it’s a different story.
Take Baptist Hospital. It was founded in 1960 on a vast tract of land covered with rockland pine scrub and palmettos at the corner of Galloway Road and Kendall Drive. There was little in the area. Dadeland Mall wouldn’t open as a small open-air shopping center for another two years.
From Baptist’s humble beginning, it has grown to a 728-bed hospital that serves about 32,000 in-patients and 72,000 emergency out-patients a year. The parent entity, Baptist Health South Florida has acquired hospitals as far north as Boynton Beach and as far south as Marathon in the Keys.
Its website shows that it operates 106 separate medical units and controls the practices of 245 physicians. It has almost 20,000 employees and over 3,000 doctors have privileges. That’s a lot of fingers in a lot of pies.
As a not-for-profit hospital, Baptist is not supposed to be profit-driven. But a look at its most recent audited income statement shows that it had what it terms “Excess of Revenues Over Expenses” of almost $250 million, giving it a bigger “profit” than industrial aluminum giant Alcoa. And that’s just in the past year.
One advantage that Baptist and other non-profits have over other entities is that it pays income taxes only on the money made by a handful of its for-profit subsidiaries. And it pays no ad valorem taxes. Its Kendall campus has an assessed total value of almost $385 million, yet it pays no property taxes, even on the portions of the office towers it rents out to unaffiliated entities. And it pays nothing in property taxes on its other hospitals, either.
Jackson Memorial, owned by the county’s Public Health Trust, doesn’t pay any taxes, either. Mount Sinai on Miami Beach is assessed by the Property Appraiser at $121 million, with $109 million of that exempt. Mercy Hospital, actually owned by HCA, is assessed and taxed at about $144 million of property value.
Healthcare is not price driven. Someone involved in a head-on collision on S. Dixie Highway won’t stop the ambulance until he can do a price comparison of the x-rays, MRIs, room rates, surgery, and pharmacy costs before telling the EMTs which hospital to go to.
The website MissionToCare.org maintains a database with average costs for 50 typical hospital treatments at 197 hospitals throughout the state of Florida. The birth of a child at Baptist averages $21,876. Baptist is able to negotiate a rate of insurance company reimbursement of about 48 percent or $10,575. The cost of childbirth at Jackson Memorial is $16,793, but Jackson only collects $6,432 from insurance companies. The Baptist mother has to come up with $11,301 while the Jackson Memorial mom is expected to pay less: $10,550. Mount Sinai charges about what Baptist does for the birth, but only manages to collect about what JMH gets from the insurance companies. In fact, the findings of several studies show that having a single dominant non-profit hospital in a market actually can raise patient costs between 26 to 40 percent.
How does Baptist do this? It’s in a stronger bargaining position when it comes to negotiating its reimbursement rates with insurers because is controls a much larger percentage of the market than any other non-governmental hospital. A 40- or 100-bed hospital can’t demand the same reimbursement rate that Baptist can.
If medical care were a normal business whose customers shopped on price, then a hospital with Baptist’s market clout might be expected to offer lower prices because of the volume of patients that it treats.
It doesn’t because it doesn’t have to.
Those who study the effect of hospital mergers have been looking for empirical evidence pointing in one direction or another, trying to answer the question of how consolidations affect patient prices. Researchers are finding that the goal of mergers, to generate cost savings and improve the quality of care, are falling short. The data points to the fact that almost all of the consolidations fail to achieve these goals.
Instead, hospital mergers will continue as a way to capture greater and greater market share, expand financing and cash flow options. In all too many cases, mergers are a way to enhance the personal egos of the organizations’ leaders than to enhance health outcomes or lower costs.
The healthcare industry, from doctors to hospitals to pharmacies and drug makers consume about one-fifth of our Gross Domestic Product, the measure economists use to weigh the amount of goods and services produced each year. That’s over $10,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country.
Among the 11 most industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks last for health outcomes, equity, and quality. All that spending has yielded poor health outcomes and a worsening life expectancy when compared with these other countries according to a 2018 report from The Commonwealth Fund.
That makes the advantages that non-profit hospitals all the more egregious. They can generate “profits” which are never taxed, avoid taxes in their properties, accumulate a war chest with which to buy out smaller competitors, and pay for it all by either keeping prices artificially high or even raising them.
So what’s the solution? Prohibiting hospital mergers? Encouraging them? Single payer health system? Going back to the old healthcare system with its gaping holes in the safety net?
What we need is a willingness to put politics aside, and maybe even profits, and to look at our health system with unjaundiced eyes, rather than being blind cheerleaders for local institutions. If the primary goal is to give value to shareholders or to increase market share, then our present system is adequate. But if instead we want our healthcare system to improve the health of everyone at a reasonable cost, to improve the quality of life, and to increase longevity, we need to start over.
Source: Community Newspapers
From Baptist’s humble beginning, it has grown to a 728-bed hospital that serves about 32,000 in-patients and 72,000 emergency out-patients a year. The parent entity, Baptist Health South Florida has acquired hospitals as far north as Boynton Beach and as far south as Marathon in the Keys.
Its website shows that it operates 106 separate medical units and controls the practices of 245 physicians. It has almost 20,000 employees and over 3,000 doctors have privileges. That’s a lot of fingers in a lot of pies.
As a not-for-profit hospital, Baptist is not supposed to be profit-driven. But a look at its most recent audited income statement shows that it had what it terms “Excess of Revenues Over Expenses” of almost $250 million, giving it a bigger “profit” than industrial aluminum giant Alcoa. And that’s just in the past year.
One advantage that Baptist and other non-profits have over other entities is that it pays income taxes only on the money made by a handful of its for-profit subsidiaries. And it pays no ad valorem taxes. Its Kendall campus has an assessed total value of almost $385 million, yet it pays no property taxes, even on the portions of the office towers it rents out to unaffiliated entities. And it pays nothing in property taxes on its other hospitals, either.
Jackson Memorial, owned by the county’s Public Health Trust, doesn’t pay any taxes, either. Mount Sinai on Miami Beach is assessed by the Property Appraiser at $121 million, with $109 million of that exempt. Mercy Hospital, actually owned by HCA, is assessed and taxed at about $144 million of property value.
Healthcare is not price driven. Someone involved in a head-on collision on S. Dixie Highway won’t stop the ambulance until he can do a price comparison of the x-rays, MRIs, room rates, surgery, and pharmacy costs before telling the EMTs which hospital to go to.
The website MissionToCare.org maintains a database with average costs for 50 typical hospital treatments at 197 hospitals throughout the state of Florida. The birth of a child at Baptist averages $21,876. Baptist is able to negotiate a rate of insurance company reimbursement of about 48 percent or $10,575. The cost of childbirth at Jackson Memorial is $16,793, but Jackson only collects $6,432 from insurance companies. The Baptist mother has to come up with $11,301 while the Jackson Memorial mom is expected to pay less: $10,550. Mount Sinai charges about what Baptist does for the birth, but only manages to collect about what JMH gets from the insurance companies. In fact, the findings of several studies show that having a single dominant non-profit hospital in a market actually can raise patient costs between 26 to 40 percent.
How does Baptist do this? It’s in a stronger bargaining position when it comes to negotiating its reimbursement rates with insurers because is controls a much larger percentage of the market than any other non-governmental hospital. A 40- or 100-bed hospital can’t demand the same reimbursement rate that Baptist can.
If medical care were a normal business whose customers shopped on price, then a hospital with Baptist’s market clout might be expected to offer lower prices because of the volume of patients that it treats.
It doesn’t because it doesn’t have to.
Those who study the effect of hospital mergers have been looking for empirical evidence pointing in one direction or another, trying to answer the question of how consolidations affect patient prices. Researchers are finding that the goal of mergers, to generate cost savings and improve the quality of care, are falling short. The data points to the fact that almost all of the consolidations fail to achieve these goals.
Instead, hospital mergers will continue as a way to capture greater and greater market share, expand financing and cash flow options. In all too many cases, mergers are a way to enhance the personal egos of the organizations’ leaders than to enhance health outcomes or lower costs.
The healthcare industry, from doctors to hospitals to pharmacies and drug makers consume about one-fifth of our Gross Domestic Product, the measure economists use to weigh the amount of goods and services produced each year. That’s over $10,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country.
Among the 11 most industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks last for health outcomes, equity, and quality. All that spending has yielded poor health outcomes and a worsening life expectancy when compared with these other countries according to a 2018 report from The Commonwealth Fund.
That makes the advantages that non-profit hospitals all the more egregious. They can generate “profits” which are never taxed, avoid taxes in their properties, accumulate a war chest with which to buy out smaller competitors, and pay for it all by either keeping prices artificially high or even raising them.
So what’s the solution? Prohibiting hospital mergers? Encouraging them? Single payer health system? Going back to the old healthcare system with its gaping holes in the safety net?
What we need is a willingness to put politics aside, and maybe even profits, and to look at our health system with unjaundiced eyes, rather than being blind cheerleaders for local institutions. If the primary goal is to give value to shareholders or to increase market share, then our present system is adequate. But if instead we want our healthcare system to improve the health of everyone at a reasonable cost, to improve the quality of life, and to increase longevity, we need to start over.
Source: Community Newspapers
As a not-for-profit hospital, Baptist is not supposed to be profit-driven. But a look at its most recent audited income statement shows that it had what it terms “Excess of Revenues Over Expenses” of almost $250 million, giving it a bigger “profit” than industrial aluminum giant Alcoa. And that’s just in the past year.
One advantage that Baptist and other non-profits have over other entities is that it pays income taxes only on the money made by a handful of its for-profit subsidiaries. And it pays no ad valorem taxes. Its Kendall campus has an assessed total value of almost $385 million, yet it pays no property taxes, even on the portions of the office towers it rents out to unaffiliated entities. And it pays nothing in property taxes on its other hospitals, either.
Jackson Memorial, owned by the county’s Public Health Trust, doesn’t pay any taxes, either. Mount Sinai on Miami Beach is assessed by the Property Appraiser at $121 million, with $109 million of that exempt. Mercy Hospital, actually owned by HCA, is assessed and taxed at about $144 million of property value.
Healthcare is not price driven. Someone involved in a head-on collision on S. Dixie Highway won’t stop the ambulance until he can do a price comparison of the x-rays, MRIs, room rates, surgery, and pharmacy costs before telling the EMTs which hospital to go to.
The website MissionToCare.org maintains a database with average costs for 50 typical hospital treatments at 197 hospitals throughout the state of Florida. The birth of a child at Baptist averages $21,876. Baptist is able to negotiate a rate of insurance company reimbursement of about 48 percent or $10,575. The cost of childbirth at Jackson Memorial is $16,793, but Jackson only collects $6,432 from insurance companies. The Baptist mother has to come up with $11,301 while the Jackson Memorial mom is expected to pay less: $10,550. Mount Sinai charges about what Baptist does for the birth, but only manages to collect about what JMH gets from the insurance companies. In fact, the findings of several studies show that having a single dominant non-profit hospital in a market actually can raise patient costs between 26 to 40 percent.
How does Baptist do this? It’s in a stronger bargaining position when it comes to negotiating its reimbursement rates with insurers because is controls a much larger percentage of the market than any other non-governmental hospital. A 40- or 100-bed hospital can’t demand the same reimbursement rate that Baptist can.
If medical care were a normal business whose customers shopped on price, then a hospital with Baptist’s market clout might be expected to offer lower prices because of the volume of patients that it treats.
It doesn’t because it doesn’t have to.
Those who study the effect of hospital mergers have been looking for empirical evidence pointing in one direction or another, trying to answer the question of how consolidations affect patient prices. Researchers are finding that the goal of mergers, to generate cost savings and improve the quality of care, are falling short. The data points to the fact that almost all of the consolidations fail to achieve these goals.
Instead, hospital mergers will continue as a way to capture greater and greater market share, expand financing and cash flow options. In all too many cases, mergers are a way to enhance the personal egos of the organizations’ leaders than to enhance health outcomes or lower costs.
The healthcare industry, from doctors to hospitals to pharmacies and drug makers consume about one-fifth of our Gross Domestic Product, the measure economists use to weigh the amount of goods and services produced each year. That’s over $10,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country.
Among the 11 most industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks last for health outcomes, equity, and quality. All that spending has yielded poor health outcomes and a worsening life expectancy when compared with these other countries according to a 2018 report from The Commonwealth Fund.
That makes the advantages that non-profit hospitals all the more egregious. They can generate “profits” which are never taxed, avoid taxes in their properties, accumulate a war chest with which to buy out smaller competitors, and pay for it all by either keeping prices artificially high or even raising them.
So what’s the solution? Prohibiting hospital mergers? Encouraging them? Single payer health system? Going back to the old healthcare system with its gaping holes in the safety net?
What we need is a willingness to put politics aside, and maybe even profits, and to look at our health system with unjaundiced eyes, rather than being blind cheerleaders for local institutions. If the primary goal is to give value to shareholders or to increase market share, then our present system is adequate. But if instead we want our healthcare system to improve the health of everyone at a reasonable cost, to improve the quality of life, and to increase longevity, we need to start over.
Source: Community Newspapers
Jackson Memorial, owned by the county’s Public Health Trust, doesn’t pay any taxes, either. Mount Sinai on Miami Beach is assessed by the Property Appraiser at $121 million, with $109 million of that exempt. Mercy Hospital, actually owned by HCA, is assessed and taxed at about $144 million of property value.
Healthcare is not price driven. Someone involved in a head-on collision on S. Dixie Highway won’t stop the ambulance until he can do a price comparison of the x-rays, MRIs, room rates, surgery, and pharmacy costs before telling the EMTs which hospital to go to.
The website MissionToCare.org maintains a database with average costs for 50 typical hospital treatments at 197 hospitals throughout the state of Florida. The birth of a child at Baptist averages $21,876. Baptist is able to negotiate a rate of insurance company reimbursement of about 48 percent or $10,575. The cost of childbirth at Jackson Memorial is $16,793, but Jackson only collects $6,432 from insurance companies. The Baptist mother has to come up with $11,301 while the Jackson Memorial mom is expected to pay less: $10,550. Mount Sinai charges about what Baptist does for the birth, but only manages to collect about what JMH gets from the insurance companies. In fact, the findings of several studies show that having a single dominant non-profit hospital in a market actually can raise patient costs between 26 to 40 percent.
How does Baptist do this? It’s in a stronger bargaining position when it comes to negotiating its reimbursement rates with insurers because is controls a much larger percentage of the market than any other non-governmental hospital. A 40- or 100-bed hospital can’t demand the same reimbursement rate that Baptist can.
If medical care were a normal business whose customers shopped on price, then a hospital with Baptist’s market clout might be expected to offer lower prices because of the volume of patients that it treats.
It doesn’t because it doesn’t have to.
Those who study the effect of hospital mergers have been looking for empirical evidence pointing in one direction or another, trying to answer the question of how consolidations affect patient prices. Researchers are finding that the goal of mergers, to generate cost savings and improve the quality of care, are falling short. The data points to the fact that almost all of the consolidations fail to achieve these goals.
Instead, hospital mergers will continue as a way to capture greater and greater market share, expand financing and cash flow options. In all too many cases, mergers are a way to enhance the personal egos of the organizations’ leaders than to enhance health outcomes or lower costs.
The healthcare industry, from doctors to hospitals to pharmacies and drug makers consume about one-fifth of our Gross Domestic Product, the measure economists use to weigh the amount of goods and services produced each year. That’s over $10,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country.
Among the 11 most industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks last for health outcomes, equity, and quality. All that spending has yielded poor health outcomes and a worsening life expectancy when compared with these other countries according to a 2018 report from The Commonwealth Fund.
That makes the advantages that non-profit hospitals all the more egregious. They can generate “profits” which are never taxed, avoid taxes in their properties, accumulate a war chest with which to buy out smaller competitors, and pay for it all by either keeping prices artificially high or even raising them.
So what’s the solution? Prohibiting hospital mergers? Encouraging them? Single payer health system? Going back to the old healthcare system with its gaping holes in the safety net?
What we need is a willingness to put politics aside, and maybe even profits, and to look at our health system with unjaundiced eyes, rather than being blind cheerleaders for local institutions. If the primary goal is to give value to shareholders or to increase market share, then our present system is adequate. But if instead we want our healthcare system to improve the health of everyone at a reasonable cost, to improve the quality of life, and to increase longevity, we need to start over.
Source: Community Newspapers
The website MissionToCare.org maintains a database with average costs for 50 typical hospital treatments at 197 hospitals throughout the state of Florida. The birth of a child at Baptist averages $21,876. Baptist is able to negotiate a rate of insurance company reimbursement of about 48 percent or $10,575. The cost of childbirth at Jackson Memorial is $16,793, but Jackson only collects $6,432 from insurance companies. The Baptist mother has to come up with $11,301 while the Jackson Memorial mom is expected to pay less: $10,550. Mount Sinai charges about what Baptist does for the birth, but only manages to collect about what JMH gets from the insurance companies. In fact, the findings of several studies show that having a single dominant non-profit hospital in a market actually can raise patient costs between 26 to 40 percent.
How does Baptist do this? It’s in a stronger bargaining position when it comes to negotiating its reimbursement rates with insurers because is controls a much larger percentage of the market than any other non-governmental hospital. A 40- or 100-bed hospital can’t demand the same reimbursement rate that Baptist can.
If medical care were a normal business whose customers shopped on price, then a hospital with Baptist’s market clout might be expected to offer lower prices because of the volume of patients that it treats.
It doesn’t because it doesn’t have to.
Those who study the effect of hospital mergers have been looking for empirical evidence pointing in one direction or another, trying to answer the question of how consolidations affect patient prices. Researchers are finding that the goal of mergers, to generate cost savings and improve the quality of care, are falling short. The data points to the fact that almost all of the consolidations fail to achieve these goals.
Instead, hospital mergers will continue as a way to capture greater and greater market share, expand financing and cash flow options. In all too many cases, mergers are a way to enhance the personal egos of the organizations’ leaders than to enhance health outcomes or lower costs.
The healthcare industry, from doctors to hospitals to pharmacies and drug makers consume about one-fifth of our Gross Domestic Product, the measure economists use to weigh the amount of goods and services produced each year. That’s over $10,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country.
Among the 11 most industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks last for health outcomes, equity, and quality. All that spending has yielded poor health outcomes and a worsening life expectancy when compared with these other countries according to a 2018 report from The Commonwealth Fund.
That makes the advantages that non-profit hospitals all the more egregious. They can generate “profits” which are never taxed, avoid taxes in their properties, accumulate a war chest with which to buy out smaller competitors, and pay for it all by either keeping prices artificially high or even raising them.
So what’s the solution? Prohibiting hospital mergers? Encouraging them? Single payer health system? Going back to the old healthcare system with its gaping holes in the safety net?
What we need is a willingness to put politics aside, and maybe even profits, and to look at our health system with unjaundiced eyes, rather than being blind cheerleaders for local institutions. If the primary goal is to give value to shareholders or to increase market share, then our present system is adequate. But if instead we want our healthcare system to improve the health of everyone at a reasonable cost, to improve the quality of life, and to increase longevity, we need to start over.
Source: Community Newspapers
If medical care were a normal business whose customers shopped on price, then a hospital with Baptist’s market clout might be expected to offer lower prices because of the volume of patients that it treats.
It doesn’t because it doesn’t have to.
Those who study the effect of hospital mergers have been looking for empirical evidence pointing in one direction or another, trying to answer the question of how consolidations affect patient prices. Researchers are finding that the goal of mergers, to generate cost savings and improve the quality of care, are falling short. The data points to the fact that almost all of the consolidations fail to achieve these goals.
Instead, hospital mergers will continue as a way to capture greater and greater market share, expand financing and cash flow options. In all too many cases, mergers are a way to enhance the personal egos of the organizations’ leaders than to enhance health outcomes or lower costs.
The healthcare industry, from doctors to hospitals to pharmacies and drug makers consume about one-fifth of our Gross Domestic Product, the measure economists use to weigh the amount of goods and services produced each year. That’s over $10,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country.
Among the 11 most industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks last for health outcomes, equity, and quality. All that spending has yielded poor health outcomes and a worsening life expectancy when compared with these other countries according to a 2018 report from The Commonwealth Fund.
That makes the advantages that non-profit hospitals all the more egregious. They can generate “profits” which are never taxed, avoid taxes in their properties, accumulate a war chest with which to buy out smaller competitors, and pay for it all by either keeping prices artificially high or even raising them.
So what’s the solution? Prohibiting hospital mergers? Encouraging them? Single payer health system? Going back to the old healthcare system with its gaping holes in the safety net?
What we need is a willingness to put politics aside, and maybe even profits, and to look at our health system with unjaundiced eyes, rather than being blind cheerleaders for local institutions. If the primary goal is to give value to shareholders or to increase market share, then our present system is adequate. But if instead we want our healthcare system to improve the health of everyone at a reasonable cost, to improve the quality of life, and to increase longevity, we need to start over.
Source: Community Newspapers
Those who study the effect of hospital mergers have been looking for empirical evidence pointing in one direction or another, trying to answer the question of how consolidations affect patient prices. Researchers are finding that the goal of mergers, to generate cost savings and improve the quality of care, are falling short. The data points to the fact that almost all of the consolidations fail to achieve these goals.
Instead, hospital mergers will continue as a way to capture greater and greater market share, expand financing and cash flow options. In all too many cases, mergers are a way to enhance the personal egos of the organizations’ leaders than to enhance health outcomes or lower costs.
The healthcare industry, from doctors to hospitals to pharmacies and drug makers consume about one-fifth of our Gross Domestic Product, the measure economists use to weigh the amount of goods and services produced each year. That’s over $10,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country.
Among the 11 most industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks last for health outcomes, equity, and quality. All that spending has yielded poor health outcomes and a worsening life expectancy when compared with these other countries according to a 2018 report from The Commonwealth Fund.
That makes the advantages that non-profit hospitals all the more egregious. They can generate “profits” which are never taxed, avoid taxes in their properties, accumulate a war chest with which to buy out smaller competitors, and pay for it all by either keeping prices artificially high or even raising them.
So what’s the solution? Prohibiting hospital mergers? Encouraging them? Single payer health system? Going back to the old healthcare system with its gaping holes in the safety net?
What we need is a willingness to put politics aside, and maybe even profits, and to look at our health system with unjaundiced eyes, rather than being blind cheerleaders for local institutions. If the primary goal is to give value to shareholders or to increase market share, then our present system is adequate. But if instead we want our healthcare system to improve the health of everyone at a reasonable cost, to improve the quality of life, and to increase longevity, we need to start over.
Source: Community Newspapers
The healthcare industry, from doctors to hospitals to pharmacies and drug makers consume about one-fifth of our Gross Domestic Product, the measure economists use to weigh the amount of goods and services produced each year. That’s over $10,000 for every man, woman, and child in this country.
Among the 11 most industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks last for health outcomes, equity, and quality. All that spending has yielded poor health outcomes and a worsening life expectancy when compared with these other countries according to a 2018 report from The Commonwealth Fund.
That makes the advantages that non-profit hospitals all the more egregious. They can generate “profits” which are never taxed, avoid taxes in their properties, accumulate a war chest with which to buy out smaller competitors, and pay for it all by either keeping prices artificially high or even raising them.
So what’s the solution? Prohibiting hospital mergers? Encouraging them? Single payer health system? Going back to the old healthcare system with its gaping holes in the safety net?
What we need is a willingness to put politics aside, and maybe even profits, and to look at our health system with unjaundiced eyes, rather than being blind cheerleaders for local institutions. If the primary goal is to give value to shareholders or to increase market share, then our present system is adequate. But if instead we want our healthcare system to improve the health of everyone at a reasonable cost, to improve the quality of life, and to increase longevity, we need to start over.
Source: Community Newspapers
That makes the advantages that non-profit hospitals all the more egregious. They can generate “profits” which are never taxed, avoid taxes in their properties, accumulate a war chest with which to buy out smaller competitors, and pay for it all by either keeping prices artificially high or even raising them.
So what’s the solution? Prohibiting hospital mergers? Encouraging them? Single payer health system? Going back to the old healthcare system with its gaping holes in the safety net?
What we need is a willingness to put politics aside, and maybe even profits, and to look at our health system with unjaundiced eyes, rather than being blind cheerleaders for local institutions. If the primary goal is to give value to shareholders or to increase market share, then our present system is adequate. But if instead we want our healthcare system to improve the health of everyone at a reasonable cost, to improve the quality of life, and to increase longevity, we need to start over.
Source: Community Newspapers
What we need is a willingness to put politics aside, and maybe even profits, and to look at our health system with unjaundiced eyes, rather than being blind cheerleaders for local institutions. If the primary goal is to give value to shareholders or to increase market share, then our present system is adequate. But if instead we want our healthcare system to improve the health of everyone at a reasonable cost, to improve the quality of life, and to increase longevity, we need to start over.
Source: Community Newspapers
