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Universal Health CEO talks about behavioral health, bundled payments

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This Modern Healthcare article with Alan Miller, chairman and CEO of the big for-profit hospital chain Universal Health Services, is well worth reading. His comments on behavioral health we found particularly interesting.

“One thing that was very helpful is that three years ago, we managed to buy the second-largest {behavioral-health} company, Psychiatric Solutions, when some of its leaders tried to take the company private and the board said no. …We had about 100 hospitals and they had about 100 hospitals. By putting them together, we got about 200 hospitals, and our company became the dominant entity in the free-standing psych business. We consolidated a good number of the free-standing psychiatric hospitals in the country.”

He was asked if  the political talk about expanding and improving behavioral health and substance-abuse treatment is going to benefit  his company.

He answered:  “Definitely, definitely. We provide excellent care, and there seems to be more of a need now, a better focus. A study just came out on the increase in suicides in the U.S. You have people with bipolar disorders, schizophrenia and depression, which leads to these suicides. These people are not taking their lives lightly. They’re suffering greatly. So there should be more treatment open to them. There are great stresses in our society, and I think sometimes drugs and alcohol are a reaction to that. Families, at one time, used to be ashamed or would hide mental illness. Now we realize that mental ailments are a sickness like physical ailments that can be treated, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

And he said his company is open to new markets. “Since we are pre-eminent in mental healthcare, a number of acute-care people are talking to us about joining them and providing that expertise to build or manage their capability in mental health, which they don’t feel secure in because it’s not their direct business. The future appears to be having a network that can take on financial risk and deal with the whole continuum of care, including mental health.”

Modern Healthcare asked him about the push for bundled payments to replace fee for service.

He answered:  “It’s slow. We’re involved in the demonstrations, but it’s not widespread. There’s a lot of conjecture that this ultimately might be where we’re going, that fee-for-service will go away, there’ll be bundled payments, and providers will take some risk.”

 


Universal Health Services may quit CMS bundled-payments test

 

In a sign of the uncertain  viability of the bundled-payment  hopes   of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services,  Universal Health Services, a hospital and behavioral-health company, may quit Medicare’s voluntary test of bundled payments “until some of the kinks are worked out,” Steve Filton, the company’s chief financial officer, told Modern Healthcare.

Universal Health Services’ enthusiasm for Medicare payment bundles has faded as the company has struggled to get useful data from federal officials, Mr.  Filton said.
The King of Prussia, Pa.-based company is trying to decide whether to withdrawn  all its 25 acute-care hospitals from Medicare’s Bundled Payments for Care Improvement Initiative, which as of last August included about about 2,100 acute-care hospitals, medical groups and other  healthcare facilities.

The Universal Health news came a month before Medicare is due to start its first mandatory test of bundled payments across 67 markets.

Modern Healthcare notes bundled-payment programs  “are central to the CMS’s push to increase the number of Medicare agreements that reward hospitals for quality improvement and better cost control.”’

 

 


Hospitals somewhat sanguine on subsidies case

 

Reuters reports that hospital executives are ”optimistic they will avoid the toughest consequences of a U.S. Supreme Court decision on whether millions of Americans can continue to purchase subsidized health benefits under Obamacare.”

“Investors interpreted commentary by Justice Anthony Kennedy, a potential swing vote among the nine judges, as favorable to the Obama administration’s defense of the subsidies that help consumers in more than 30 states.”

“I am hopeful that the court will recognize and uphold the intent of Congress, which was to expand coverage as broadly as possible,” Bill Carpenter, chief executive of LifePoint Hospitals, said in an interview.

If the court rules against  federal subsidies, Carpenter and other executives interviewed by Reuters said they expected the justices ”would allow for a transition period before patients lose access to healthcare.”

”Alan Miller, CEO of hospital chain Universal Health Services, expects the Obama administration would reach an agreement with Republican opponents of the law to keep subsidies in place through the end of 2015. He believes that is enough time to create a workaround to the Supreme Court ruling.”

 

 

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