Bram Sable-Smith and Andy Miller The San Leandro Hospital emergency department, where nurse Mawata Kamara works, went into lockdown recently when a visitor, agitated about being barred from seeing a patient due to covid-19 restrictions, threatened to bring a gun to the California facility. It wasn’t the first time the department faced a gun threat […]

Hospitals are paying $24 billion more for labor annually due to pandemic-driven staffing shortages and increased patient demand, draining resources when they’re already feeling the physical and emotional toll of the virus. The $24 billion, according to data released Wednesday from health-care improvement company Premier Inc., represents an 8% increase in clinical labor costs per patient day compared […]

As Congress’s self-imposed Sept. 15 deadline to ready a massive reconciliation package approaches, several health care stakeholders, including hospital associations and the American Heart Association, have sent priority lists to Congressional leadership, and lobbyists expect more to come next week. Sources have also heard that the House Ways & Means committee will mark up its […]

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, stay-at-home measures, potential risk of COVID infection at a hospital or doctors’ offices, and concerns over hospital capacity led to sharp declines in health care utilization and spending, including drops in hospital admissions for both acute and elective procedures. There was also a drop in preventive service use. Spending decreased across all health services. While telemedicine use increased rapidly during the […]

NJHA Impact Analysis of the Imputed Floor Policy Imputed Floor Policy in the FY22 IPPS Final Rule

Public health officials and epidemiological associations are often not using COVID-19 data gathered through the Trump-era controversial HHS hospital reporting program, opting instead for state and local datasets that are more detailed, the Government Accountability Office found in a report ordered by Democratic lawmakers who worried the Trump administration set up the HHS program to […]

Hospitals will be required to track and report Covid-19 vaccination status for their health-care personnel to comply with a rule from the Biden administration. The requirement, contained in a wide-ranging hospital payment rule (RIN 0938-AU44, 0938-AU56), is an effort to “support public health tracking and provide patients, beneficiaries, and their caregivers important information to support […]

The American Hospital Association has elected six new members to its Board of Trustees for three-year terms beginning Jan. 1, 2022. The Board of Trustees is the highest policymaking body of the AHA and has ultimate authority for the governance and management of its directions and finances. Dennis W. Pullin, FACHE, president and CEO of […]

Supplies of critical medical products in the Strategic National Stockpile are still well below federal targets more than 18 months after the coronavirus first emerged in the United States, according to internal data obtained by POLITICO. The federal government has built up the stockpile significantly over the last year. There are more than 35 times […]

The nation’s hospitals and health systems continued to see gains across key metrics in May compared to dramatic losses experienced in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Volumes and margins both increased compared to 2020 levels, but remain down compared to 2019. Total expenses and revenues, however, rose above both pandemic and pre-pandemic performance. […]