Photo via hospitalfinances.org.
Hospitalfinances.org, a site AHCJ launched in 2018 to provide free, searchable financial information on nonprofit hospitals across the United States, is back online after a year-long hiatus.
“Hospitalfinances.org was designed to give the most useful parts of the IRS Form 990 to journalists with a few clicks,” said Karl Stark, a former AHCJ board president who worked with Jeff Porter, former director of education, to help build the site in 2018.
Photo: Naoki Takano via Flickr
Given all the concern about the failure of rural hospitals, it may seem counterintuitive that some hospitals in rural America may need to close. In multipart series for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, investigative news reporter Yamil Berard found last year that some rural hospitals in Georgia had serious deficiencies.
Those deficiencies included significantly low occupancy rates, stiff competition from other hospitals, dwindling populations in their service areas, poor management and faulty decision-making, she reported. Continue reading
Photo: Ninian Reid via Flickr
AHCJ has updated its public HospitalInspections.org website to give people a better glimpse of potential COVID-19 problems at some hospitals around the country. For reporters, the inspection reports may prompt news stories on how local hospitals are handling the pandemic.
The data covers January 2011 through the third quarter of 2020. A search for the term “covid” returns 73 records of hospital inspection reports from March 25 through Sept. 16. Continue reading
You’ve probably heard (or even written about) recent ransomware attacks on hospitals. The FBI warned hospitals several days ago of the likelihood of attacks with the Ryuk ransomware and, sure enough, numerous hospitals have been hit, forcing some to resort to paper, the last thing they need with COVID-19 cases again spiking. Others have shut down email.
The Russian hackers behind the attacks are asking for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in the form of bitcoin and with, hospitals facing the third wave of the pandemic, they expect to get it. Continue reading
Photo: stevenharman via Flickr
Research released today shows that from 2016 through 2018, self-insured employers and commercial health insurers in 49 states and the District of Columbia paid 247% more, on average, than what the Medicare program would have paid for the same inpatient and outpatient hospital services.
Researchers from RAND analyzed hospital claims data from 3,112 hospitals in every state except Maryland, which was excluded because the state has an all-payer rate setting model in which hospitals charge prices that are equal to what Medicare and private insurers pay, the report explained. The claims totaled $33.8 billion and came from self-insured employers, six state all-payer claims databases and health plans from 2016 to 2018. Continue reading
