Becker's Hospital Review

23 CFO / FINANCE Yale economists: These 1% steps can reform healthcare By Morgan Haefner A series of 1 percent solutions could collectively low- er healthcare costs by hundreds of billions of dollars, according to an article published in Health Affairs Feb. 10. e article, written by Zack Cooper, PhD, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Conn., and Fiona Scott Morton, PhD, the eodore Nierenberg Professor of Eco- nomics at the Yale University School of Management in New Hav- en, examined what incremental healthcare reform could look like. "Rather than speaking about health spending via abstractions, we should view high U.S. health care costs as the result of a series of discrete problems that each incrementally raises health spend- ing by a percent or two — so-called 'one percent problems,'" the authors wrote. "While each problem is unremarkable in isolation, the collective impact of a series of one percent problems can help explain why the U.S. spends more than other nations." e authors said economists and policymakers should reframe healthcare spending as a series of 1 percent problems, and use those problems as a road map for cost reduction. ey outlined 16 steps that, if implemented, would decrease overall annual health- care spending by 8.87 percent. Here are the 16 steps, ranked by their projected annual savings as a share of national health spending: 1. Regulating healthcare provider prices: 1.89 percent 2. Addressing surprise medical bills: 1.67 percent 3. Increasing the efficiency of claims adjudication: 1.25 percent 4. Addressing vertical integration of hospitals and physicians: 0.91 percent 5. Introducing smart provider networks: 0.83 percent 6. Addressing hospital consolidation: 0.69 percent 7. Improving health insurance plan choice: 0.63 percent 8. Improving plan auto-assignment in Medicaid managed care: 0.24 percent 9. Reforming how Medicare reimburses biosimilars: 0.21 percent 10. Addressing orphan drugs: 0.15 percent 11. Reducing fraud in home health: 0.12 percent 12. Reforming the payments for long-term care hospitals: 0.11 percent 13. Decrease cost barriers for living kidney donations: 0.08 percent 14. Expanding preferred pharmacy networks: 0.04 percent 15. Eliminating prescription copay coupons: 0.03 percent 16. Expanding kidney exchanges: 0.02 percent n FTC closes investigation after Georgia health systems abandon merger By Ayla Ellison T he Federal Trade Commission closed its investi- gation into the proposed merger of Macon, Ga.- based Atrium Health Navicent and Warner Robins, Ga.-based Houston Healthcare after the health systems called off their plan to combine. The FTC announced March 3 that commission staff rec- ommended challenging the transaction after determin- ing it would eliminate competition and raise healthcare costs in central Georgia. The FTC said the health systems' decision to call off the deal is "great news" for patients. "The proposed transaction threatened to increase health- care costs for employers and patients in the region and would have substantially lessened competition that has benefited the community through expansion of health- care services and improved quality of care," acting FTC Chair Rebecca Kelly Slaughter said in a news release. The commission voted 4-0 to disclose the investigation and close it. n Massachusetts health system gets $800K in anonymous bitcoin donations By Katie Adams A n anonymous donor made two bitcoin donations, each worth about $400,000, to Hyannis, Mass.- based Cape Cod Healthcare, The Boston Globe reported Feb. 19. On Jan. 28, an anonymous donor transferred $400,000 worth of bitcoins into Cape Cod Healthcare's established bank account that can process cryptocurrency. On Feb. 19, the health system received another bitcoin trans- fer worth $400,000 from the same donor, according to The Boston Globe. The health system told the newspaper it immediately exchanged the bitcoins into U.S. dollars. "I'm really excited," Christopher Lawson, Cape Cod Health- care's senior vice president and chief development officer, told The Boston Globe. "We are coming out of a period during COVID when donations were hard to come by for a lot of folks. This lets people know that we have the capa- bility of accepting these cryptocurrencies in donation, and we have the infrastructure in place." n

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