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| The Monthly Pulse |
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| Hospital mergers tied to increased layoffs, reduced tax revenues: report
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| The Story |
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| More than 1,000 mergers of hospitals took place across the U.S. within the past two decades. To assess the impact of mergers on local communities, researchers performed a new study comparing post-merger hospital prices and employment and tax data. Roughly 40% of hospitals raised prices by 5% within two years of a merger, which led to layoffs of at least 200 people in healthcare and non-healthcare roles within the community, on average. |
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| What You Should Know |
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| In addition to studying the economic impacts of hospital mergers, study authors also found an association between mergers and suicides and overdoses. Roughly one in 140 people who lost their job as healthcare prices rose died from suicide or drug overdose. The American Hospital Association (AHA) criticized the study, calling the attempt to link suicide rates with hospital pricing “unconscionable,” noting that overall employment increased during the study period and that hospitals go to great lengths to save people every day.
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| Is Improving Culture The Key to Easing Workforce Challenges?
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| The Story |
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| While workforce vitality is often measured in numbers, prioritizing less-tangible areas such as employee satisfaction is key to fostering a sustainable workforce. Instead of one-and-done activities, experts argue that hospital leaders should focus on organizational values that prioritize transparency and genuine caring for all employees. They should be especially focused on middle management, and with these efforts, key metrics such as turnover rates should improve naturally as a result.
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| What You Should Know |
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| Efforts to build a strong workforce culture must start at the top and be woven into the organization’s overall strategy. While approaches may vary from one healthcare organization to the next, examples could include instituting meeting-free Fridays and adopting a reporting and development system where physicians and nurses can anonymously share concerns. For middle management, surveys may be issued to gather feedback, which can help leaders understand opportunities for improvement.
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| Physician, nursing groups oppose APRN Compact |
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| The Story |
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| The APRN compact would allow APRNs with more than 2,080 hours of practice to hold a single multistate license, thereby allowing them to work in other compact states without obtaining additional licenses. Its goal is to increase access to care by enabling APRNs to practice both in-person and electronically across state lines. Yet, groups such as the American Association of Nurse Practitioners and the American Medical Association (AMA) are pushing back against the APRN compact. |
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| What You Should Know |
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| In particular, the American Association of Nurse Practitioners is calling for an improved version of the compact, as they oppose the inclusion of practice hours as a prerequisite, saying that APRNs are prepared to practice safely immediately following graduation and passing their board examination. The AMA, on the other hand, opposes the compact due to the fact that it can grant independent practice to APRNs and/or prescriptive authority in areas where such rights don’t exist. Nonetheless, support for the compact is growing, with seven states having joined in 2023 and two states joining earlier in 2024.
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| Leadership Reflections |
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Crucial Conversations
If you are a consumer of earnings reports and outlooks, you know that AI is a common topic of discussion by leaders in virtually all industries. AI has applications that directly benefit the customer and use cases that increase productivity on the administrative end of the organization. It also reminds me a bit of the dot com boom. I don’t believe this is some flash in the pan technology, however, we often observe exuberance around new technologies while collectively discerning use cases that are value creating vs. those that are conceptually attractive not delivering yields (CANDY for short).
I have experienced the most interactions with AI, specifically LLMs, in my email inbox. In the early stages, it was fairly easy to identify clunky marketing outreach generated with LLMs. Two primary selling points include the models constantly “learning” and enabling scaling up to reach a larger audience. Conceptually, the technology can deliver almost limitless personalized touch points, vastly exceeding the capabilities of a human creating and initiating each interaction. As these technologies continue to evolve and improve, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish AI prepared communication from human communication. Proponents will say that is the power of the technology.
Given that these technologies have virtually limitless scale, at what point does the communication medium like email become so full of noise that the channel becomes worthless? Ironically, one of the other use cases is the idea of a virtual assistant which can include screening and perhaps even responding to the deluge of incoming email. This sets up the scenario where messaging initiated by an AI technology is filtered and responded to by an AI technology. So, bots talking to bots? On the one hand, that sounds crazy. On the other hand, it would be unwise to underestimate the capabilities of these technologies.
Are you observing similar trends in your inbound communication? Are you experiencing the “noise” related to AI-generated content and volume? What strategies are you using to cut through the noise?
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HLTH 2024 |
| Sun., Oct. 20 - Wed., Oct. 23 |
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Healthcare Cybersecurity Forum |
| Thurs., Oct. 31 - Fri., Nov. 1 |
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