The number of vulnerable patients, social risk factors, and other issues beyond a provider’s control, lead to misleading ratings, Essential Hospitals says.
In an era of shifting attitudes and expectations on the part of patients, providers can no longer be content that the old models will see them through.
Government has a history of slashing provider payments for government health programs; Medicare and Medicaid reimburse providers less than the cost of delivering care, AHA says.
When travel and wait times were quantified using hourly wage to measure "economic cost of time spent" the costs averaged $89 billion dollars annually, the analysis said.