As healthcare organizations prepare for the ICD-10 conversion, everyone knows there will be challenges. And while much of the focus has been on the difficulties of hands-on implementation, financial managers are not likely to make it through unscathed.
Beginning with high-deductible health plans and cost sharing models, which started springing up around a decade ago, and continuing to the creation of health insurance exchanges — written into the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — consumerism has been on a steady rise in the healthcare industry.
When David Ebel joined the financial executive staff of Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic in the late 1980s, he had zero experience in healthcare but plenty of experience in the corporate finance world at accounting firm Arthur Andersen and then Dayton Hudson Corp., which is now known as discount retail giant Target.
The legal intricacies of today’s 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court to uphold key provisions of the Affordable Care Act will be parsed for weeks, months and probably years, and will extend far beyond health care. But for hospital executives wondering what it all means for their operations, there are two key pieces emerging at the moment— while the Court upheld the individual mandate as a tax, it may make it difficult for the federal government to withhold existing Medicaid funds from states that refuse to participate in the law’s Medicaid expansion. So while millions of additional paying customers are expected to enter the health care system via the mandate, longstanding concerns about uncompensated care will remain an issue for hospital balance sheets.
For the past two weeks, people following healthcare reform have waited eagerly for the Supreme Court to issue its decision on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It hasn’t happened yet, and everyone with an interest in the nation’s healthcare system continues to wait and see what the Court’s ruling will be.