Tag: "Hospitals"

Health Jobs Pick Up in Booming Jobs Report

BLSToday’s Employment Situation Summary, which came in above strong expectations, also saw faster growth in health services jobs than other nonfarm civilian jobs. In December, health services jobs grew at 0.26 percent, versus only 0.20 percent for other jobs. Health services jobs comprised 13 percent of the 292,000 jobs added in December (Table I).

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Within health services, outpatient care jobs grew much faster than jobs at other facilities. Overall, jobs at ambulatory facilities grew faster than hospital jobs. This is a good development because hospitals are less efficient locations of care.

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Jan 08, 2016 | 2 comments | by

Private Health Construction Leads Slow Building Market

New construction starts turned negative last November, slowing -0.4 percent from September. Health facilities construction shrank only -0.1 percent (Table 1).

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Jan 04, 2016 | Leave a Comment | by

What is Driving Health Prices Up?

The recent arrest of Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, for securities fraud, reminds us that high prescription drug prices are today’s whipping boy for the costs of health care. Hillary Clinton and other politicians have promised to impose federal controls on pharmaceutical prices.

However, prescription drugs have not been the fastest growing item in health care since the economy started to enter the Great Recession in 2007. That distinction belongs to health insurance (specifically, medical and hospital insurance, not workers’ compensation, income replacement, or long-term care). Table I shows price indices for various components of personal consumption expenditures, indexed such that 2007 equals 100.

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Dec 18, 2015 | 6 comments | by

CPI: Hospitals Under Pressure As Physician Prices Rise

BLSNovember’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) indicates health prices are moderating, though still increasing higher than non-heath consumer goods. In the third piece of bad news for hospitals (from their perspective, at least, after the Quarterly Services Survey and the Producer Price Index), prices for hospital services actually dropped (See Table I).

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Dec 16, 2015 | 2 comments | by

QSS: Dramatic Drop In Hospital Profitability in 3rd Quarter

The latest Quarterly Services Survey (QSS) showed a dramatic turnaround in hospitals’ fortunes. Quarterly revenues dropped two percent from the 2nd quarter, while offices of physicians and home health services grew over three percent (see Table I). Hospital revenue grew only 5.3 percent from 2014 Q3 to 2015 Q3, but that was still significantly lower than growth for most other health services.

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In the previous QSS, I discussed the healthy rise in hospital margins. That has changed dramatically. The Q3 data is subject to revision. Nevertheless, it indicates a dramatic change in hospitals’ fortunes (see Table 2).

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Dec 15, 2015 | 4 comments | by

PPI: Pharmaceutical Prices Finally Tame In November

BLSNovember’s Producer Price Index (PPI) finally saw a slowdown in pharmaceutical price increases, which increased 0.3 percent, month on month. This was the same as the overall PPI increase. Price increases for health goods and services were very slight, compared to general PPI. Indeed, two categories (X-Ray & electromedical equipment and biological products including diagnostics) actually experienced price deflation (see Table I).

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Dec 15, 2015 | 1 comment | by

Hospitals Dominate Health Jobs In November

BLSThe November Employment Situation Summary came in as expected, with 211,000 nonfarm civilian jobs added. Last month’s report was dominated by health jobs, which was not the case today. The increase of 24,000 health jobs comprised only 11 percent of the payroll hike, and both health and non-health jobs rose by 15 percent on the month (Table I).

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However, hospital jobs, which increased 13,000, comprised over half the growth in health jobs. This is something we view with concern. We prefer to see health jobs grow in ambulatory settings, because hospitals are the most expensive location of care. Hopefully, technology will move more health services out of the hospitals.

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Dec 04, 2015 | 1 comment | by

Connected Care Cuts Costs; But Can It Overcome Inertia?

electronic-medical-record(Part two of a two-part series. A version of this Health Alert was published by Forbes.)

The first article in this series suggested that there is a great opportunity for “connected care” to reduce costs by keeping patients out of hospitals and nursing homes. “Connected care” refers to a large and growing portfolio of digital tools, from video consultations with psychiatrists to in-home sensors passively detecting when a senior falls to devices that measure diabetics’ blood glucose and send messages to their families’ or doctors’ smartphones when intervention might be needed.

It does not take a lot of imagination to see that these technologies should be able to cut huge costs out of the health system. Yet, uptake so far has been limited. To the degree that there has been widespread adoption, it is in the use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Nine in ten hospitals offer patients the ability to at least view their records online, and a significant share allow patients to download and transmit their records. However, this is not actually leading to better care, because the EHRs were implemented as a consequence of government subsidy rather than patient demand.

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Dec 02, 2015 | 65 comments | by

Big Jump in Public Health Facilities Construction in October

After a significant drop in September, health construction starts increased significantly in October: A 1.3 percent increase versus a 1.0 percent increase for other construction starts (see Table I). On a twelve-month basis health facilities construction is still positive, but has been running slower than the booming non-health construction market: 6.1 percent versus 13.3 percent.

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Dec 01, 2015 | 3 comments | by

Hospital Ownership of Physicians Drives Up Costs

New research published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal supports, with rigorous data analysis, that hospital ownership of medical practices drives up costs:

Among the 240 Metropolitan Statistical Areas, physician-hospital integration increased from 2008 to 2012 by a mean of 3.3 percentage points, with considerable variation in increases across MSAs. For our study sample of 7,391,335 nonelderly enrollees, an increase in physician-hospital integration equivalent to the 75th percentile of changes experienced by MSAs was associated with a mean increase of $75 per enrollee in annual outpatient spending from 2008 to 2012, a 3.1% increase relative to mean outpatient spending in 2012). This increase in outpatient spending was driven almost entirely by price increases because associated changes in utilization were minimal (corresponding change in price-standardized spending, $14). Changes in physician-hospital integration were not associated with significant changes in inpatient spending ($22 per enrollee) or utilization ($10 per enrollee).

(Note: I have edited out the measures of statistical significance from the abstract, for ease of reading.)

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Nov 20, 2015 | 17 comments | by
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