Economics: PE hospital now a nonprofit | Reducing prior authorizations by 30% | Practice consolidation | GLP-1 price spike

Quorum Health said the move will allow it to save money through tax exemptions and provide its 11 hospitals with access to the 340B Drug Pricing Program. The health system is majority-owned by Goldentree Asset Management.

No group fared particularly well in an analysis from Trilliant Health looking at publicly reported data. Most of the new utilization of mental health services was for anxiety, with women seeking care most often.

The insurance arm of UnitedHealth Group said the shift is part of its ongoing effort to eliminate the barriers between care delivery and medical coverage. The full list of services exempt from prior authorizations includes diagnostic tests and many outpatient surgeries.

These third-party marketers earn commissions from their insurer clients not only upon initial signups but also every time “their” enrollees renew without changing plans.

U.S. healthcare gets plenty of bang for its buck out of community health workers (CHWs), according to a systematic review of the relevant published research. 

The days when most doctors worked in independent practice settings are fading from memory like old photoprints in a musty scrapbook.

Private-equity acquisitions of primary-care provider practices neither alter hospitalization rates nor affect acute-care outcomes, according to new research out of Brown University. 

If Congress doesn’t act soon, CMS’s flexible funding of telemedicine visits—a temporary holdover from the COVID era—will dry up next year. A new study may help persuade fiscally cautious representatives not to let that happen.

In a survey, employers told the Business Group on Health that they aren’t yet seeing evidence of long-term health benefits from taking GLP-1s for weight loss, leaving them unsure how to manage costs while continuing to cover them.

“When hospitals that were once competitors merge, prices go up—often by double-digit percentages—with no measurable improvement in patient outcomes.”