Keeping Safety-Net Hospitals on Sound Financial Footing

 
A new report prepared for The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System offers a series of recommendations to help shore up the finances of safety-net hospitals and promote their ability to provide high-quality care to low-income, vulnerable patients once the health reform law is fully implemented.

According to Toward a High Performance Health Care System for Vulnerable Populations: Funding for Safety-Net Hospitals, by Deborah Bachrach and colleagues at Manatt Health Solutions, safety-net institutions face a number of challenges, both short- and long-term. These include generally low Medicaid payment rates, anticipated reductions under the Affordable Care Act in payments to hospitals serving a disproportionately large share of poor and uninsured patients, and expected changes in funding streams owing to an expansion of Medicaid patients under health reform. The report suggests strategies that would better target public dollars to these hospitals to sustain them, as well as to stimulate and reward high performance.

Read more on commonwealthfund.org.