New research suggests that PE firms don’t know how to make money on physician practices. Here’s what that means for provider planning.

How an illness led this senior consultant into a healthcare career – with a special focus on improving access for underserved communities.

Student debt is a big hurdle to healthcare workforce development, but Bloomberg Philanthropies is betting that it doesn’t have to be.

Research shows that observation status is much more common under Medicare Advantage – bad news for patients and hospitals alike.

Hospital operating margins are highly uncertain, even as investment income provides an illusion of financial wellbeing.

Our strategy consultant discusses her background in EMS, her burden for rural healthcare … and her love of the outdoors.

Here’s what happened when our far-flung team gathered in NC for a 2023 holiday party.

MA plans are using millions of DRG downgrades as a “backdoor” tool for cutting hospital payments. Here are 3 ways to fight back.

Prior authorizations have become the norm in Medicare Advantage, causing treatment delays for patients and financial headaches for providers.

Medicare Advantage now covers more than half of U.S. seniors, putting huge new strains on healthcare delivery.

A Maryland expert shares her experience with total cost of care as CMS pushes other states to consider the approach.

For providers in imminent danger of closing their doors and stopping all service, private equity might be better than nothing. But only just.

Nursing homes are facing unprecedented staffing challenges in 2023 – with big implications for hospitals.

When a rural hospital was closed unexpectedly, Ascendient stepped in to find a more sustainable option for local healthcare.

Thoughts on the newest CMS model, based on our deep expertise with Maryland’s TCOC model.

Each month, the Ascendient Research Team curates and analyzes the most pressing, most actionable healthcare research.

Our resident CPA discusses where he came from, what drives him, and what he’d like to fix in healthcare.

Rising interest rates + building costs have nearly doubled the price of capital projects. What happens now?

From state capitals to Washington DC, hospitals face mounting pressure to justify their tax exemption. Here are 3 things to do right now.

Big health systems are turning profitable again, but investment income may be masking deep – and unsustainable – operational woes.

Struggling physician practices may be missing a lucrative opportunity that’s also a key to healthcare transformation.

See why better administrative support may be the key to reducing burnout among professional staff in local health departments.

Two experts from the de Beaumont Foundation share their views on the future public health, based on their landmark study.

AI tools may be a helpful resource when creating CON applications, but they can’t yet replace personal experience or human smarts.

The DOJ sues hospitals to protect competition in healthcare while the DOT pays millions to protect airline monopolies … but why?

We asked a leading expert to answer 3 important questions about how hospitals might use AI technologies such as ChatGPT.

An upstart insurance company hopes to transform healthcare with a carrot-and-stick approach to primary care. Here’s why it matters.

Three healthcare leaders in a variety of roles discuss Ascendient’s value as a long-term partner.

When our far-flung team gets together for the holidays, it’s always a memorable – and impactful – occasion.

Corporate buyers are snapping up physician practices at a record pace. Here are 4 implications for hospitals’ physician alignment strategy.

We have answers to the 9 biggest questions we’ve been hearing about Medicare’s new Rural Emergency Hospital model.

Healthcare financial planning is tougher than ever. In 2022, even the largest health systems are losing money on both operations & investments.

Donna Isgett, CEO of McLeod Health, discusses the growing momentum of healthcare transformation and how Ascendient’s Healthytown model is helping to ensure a sustainable future for her nonprofit system with seven hospitals and 15,000 employees spread across 12 counties in South Carolina. “[Today] we’re paid for fee-for-service – you do a service, and you’re compensated… Read More

Lately we’ve seen record interest in our strategic planning services for hospitals – and that could be a bad sign for the U.S. healthcare system.

If you think the end of Amazon Care represents a failure, then maybe it’s time to re-examine your definition of healthcare strategy.

New rules are coming soon for screening patients with health-related social needs. Here’s what that means for your mission & margins.

Yes, the 2023 IPPS boosts inpatient reimbursement by several billion dollars, but 3 trends around hospital data could be even bigger news.

There’s likely to be a glut of unused inpatient hospital rooms when REH status picks up steam. Here are 3 ways to put those rooms to use.

Days cash on hand, the quickest metric for judging financial health at Critical Access Hospitals, is poised to plunge in 2022. Here’s why.

In an increasingly competitive healthcare environment, affiliation is sometimes the only realistic option for keeping vital services local and accessible. In this short video, hospital president Preston Hammock shares his experience working with M&A advisors who cared about the community as much as he did. “They value the end product of the healthcare system and… Read More

Accessible primary care is a key to population health. Community assets like churches & schools might be the best way to meet the need.

Thanks to their ubiquity and familiarity, pharmacies can play an important role in healthcare transformation – if policymakers allow them to.

A Joint Committee of the NC General Assembly recently heard from Ascendient’s Dawn Carter on the subject of Certificate of Need reform.

Third-party cookies are commonly used in healthcare marketing, but they’re going away in 2022. Here’s what you need to know.

A good SWOT analysis is foundational to public health strategic planning. Here’s a step-by-step guide for doing it right.

Companies are investing billions in value-based care – a good sign for healthcare transformation but a potential problem for traditional providers.

As some public health departments come under fire by Covid-weary residents, the CHA process could be a powerful tool for bridge-building.

Physician assistants can help relieve the looming physician shortage, but only when they’re allowed to practice at the top of their license.

After decades as a hospital CEO & board member, Joann Anderson is now offering consulting services in healthcare leadership and rural operations.

A review of financial data from 2020 shows how hospital planning has been upset by Covid-19. Here are 5 implications moving forward.

Biden’s spending bill includes strategic funding for end-of-life care, including hospice & palliative medicine. Here’s why it matters.

With CMS targeting 100% accountable care for Medicare enrollees, Medicare Advantage is poised for even faster growth.

Rural hospitals are closing at a record pace, yet NC’s most powerful lawmakers don’t bother to join the bipartisan Senate Rural Health Caucus.

Joann Anderson, a longtime rural healthcare CEO, on the role of values & mission alignment in a consulting relationship.

Covid-19 gave a big boost to Hospital at Home efforts. With higher satisfaction, lower costs, and better outcomes, the trend looks unstoppable.

Be sure your physician recruitment strategy recognizes that doctors need to unplug & have a life. That’s key to smart physician recruiting.

Healthcare providers face a 6% reimbursement cut in the event of Medicare insolvency – a scenario that looks increasingly likely.

Hospital community benefit is tough to measure, but it’s worth the effort – both for more equitable healthcare and better hospital finances.

The rural healthcare crisis is getting worse, with record hospital closures in 2020. Here’s what Ascendient is doing about it.

For the first time in a generation, NC has modified its CON laws. Here’s what hospital leaders need to know about the changes.

As Amazon and others invest in healthcare delivery, traditional providers need to re-think their approach to consumers.

Regulating healthcare price transparency is a bad idea for 4 reasons. Read our op-ed originally published in the Charlotte Observer.

Healthcare provider recruitment could get trickier – and costlier – as corporate giants like Amazon move into the space.

“Saving” hospitals isn’t the lone solution for struggling communities. Instead, think about prioritizing services for rural healthcare access.

A PHE waiver gave a huge boost to the Hospital at Home model, which shows great promise for advancing the “healthcare trifecta.”

Meet the managing consultants joining Ascendient as part of the firm’s largest-ever expansion.

Bolstered by CMS payment incentives, mobile integrated healthcare is reducing ED visits and improving population health.

Before starting the healthcare M&A process, it’s important to answer questions regarding your why, what, who, and when.

Maryland’s experiment with healthcare transformation has been encouraging but not perfect. Here are some of the biggest lessons learned.

In the second of our three-part series, we examine how Maryland’s unique payment models work – and what other states can learn.

Maryland’s Medicare waiver is getting national attention as CMS rolls out its new AHEAD model. Here are the essentials you need to know.

Healthcare leaders sometimes say they don’t see the value in health system planning because no one can predict exactly what the future healthcare delivery environment will look like.  They reason that, without a crystal ball, there is little point in planning any differently than they have in the past.  We believe this viewpoint is misguided… Read More

A healthcare revolution is on the horizon. We know that change in healthcare is driven by change in payment. Though payment today still is largely based on volume—especially volume of high-tech procedures, we’re seeing a shift to payment that incentivizes the least costly, most effective care. As a result of payment shifts, healthcare delivery is… Read More

For those who have been following our work and research during much of the past decade, you have heard us continue to express our concern for the transition to site-neutral payment and the associated impact on many of our community hospital clients.  In our Devastation of Site-Neutral Payment video blog, we quantified that impact on… Read More

Long considered a key component of a future healthcare delivery system, virtual care adoption has accelerated across the country as healthcare systems find new, safer ways to continue providing services to their patients during the COVID-19 outbreak. Before the pandemic, the move to virtual care saw great success in some markets yet floundered in others…. Read More

Long considered a key component of a future healthcare delivery system, virtual care adoption has accelerated across the country as healthcare systems find new, safer ways to continue providing services to their patients during the COVID-19 outbreak. Before the pandemic, the move to virtual care saw great success in some markets yet floundered in others…. Read More

All too often these days, another rural hospital announces its closure. Even more disheartening than losing the blue “H” sign is that many of these communities lose access to healthcare. According to data from the Sheps Center, more than 100 rural hospitals have closed since 2010, and 60% of these communities have no rural healthcare… Read More

With the world having fundamentally changed over the last 90 days, many healthcare organizations may need an overhaul of their current strategy—but who has time for strategic planning in the midst of a pandemic?  All too often traditional strategic planning involves belabored processes over an extended period of time that ultimately leads to little, if… Read More

As we begin to emerge from the country’s initial response to COVID-19, from every sector comes the question, “What is the new normal”? For healthcare organizations who are at the frontline of this pandemic, it is a pivotal moment to re-examine strategies that will need to adapt for “The New Normal.” Despite the pause in… Read More

Ascendient is pleased to offer to any hospital or health system in the US a free, customized COVID-19 Bed Capacity Assessment. News outlets are sounding the alarm regarding the lack of available hospital beds to accommodate the COVID-19 pandemic as it rolls across the US. Releases by both Health Affairs and the Harvard Global Health… Read More

We recognize that what you all are dealing with on the front lines of COVID-19 is much more significant than what we can offer to do. At the same time, we feel a strong obligation to assist you in any way possible. FREE COVID-19 Bed Capacity Assessment Though some states have already relaxed regulations regarding… Read More

“The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same.[1]” When Ascendient was launched in the summer of 1994, Congress was debating the Clintons’ “Managed Competition” plan to reform the US healthcare system.  It faced defeat a few months later.  In the decades since, we applauded the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010,… Read More

TRANSCRIPTION: This is Brian Ackerman. Today I want to talk to you a little bit about rethinking primary care recruitment. If you’re in the recruiting business, you know how difficult it is to attract and retain primary care physicians in particular. What I want to do today is really outline why you might want to… Read More

TRANSCRIPTION: This is Brian Ackerman. I want to talk to you today about the devastation of site-neutral payment. Site-neutral payment is nothing new. We’ve worked with hospital clients for a number of years to discuss how from a competitive standpoint, they may look to push certain services into a freestanding setting and the associated implications… Read More

TRANSCRIPTION: I’m Daniel Carter. I wanted to take a few minutes today to share some ideas with those of you who may be working on your community health needs assessments. Now, these are ideas that I have developed over a number of years working with all types of organizations including public health departments, FQHCs, and… Read More

Announcements by CMS and recent changes in the healthcare industry demonstrate that Ascendient’s forward-looking approach, aided by the HealthytownTM model we developed, has accurately predicted the road signs now visible on the path to healthcare transformation. We have known for some time that the U.S. healthcare system as it exists is not sustainable. Costs continue… Read More

A recent federal report indicates Medicare Part A is on shakier ground than was previously anticipated. Growing enrollment and use coupled with rising healthcare costs and lower payroll taxes will likely increase financial pressures in coming years. Congress has already enacted payment reductions to providers, and one can only expect there will be more to… Read More

  Dear Clients and Friends, Please enjoy this short video of our thoughts for the season.  Thank you for your continued friendship, support, and partnership.       Ascendient will be closed December 24, 2018 through January 1, 2019.  Dawn Carter will be the partner on-call during that time for any urgent issues. Our home office… Read More

A growing shortage of physicians coupled with rising costs and stronger patient demand are pressuring the U.S. healthcare industry in ways we’ve never seen before. Transforming care delivery starts with specialists, hospitals and emergency rooms being reserved for those patients that need it the most while moving more services to primary physicians. Yet for primary… Read More

Dawn Carter, Ascendient After decades of unabated growth in healthcare costs, payors, consumers and the government alike are finally taking action to eliminate cost-shifting and to force providers to assume more risk. From MACRA and the lower reimbursement rates of Medicare Advantage to the growing use of freestanding sites, hospitals are facing a transformational shift… Read More

The future is hard to predict however if you plan using scenario planning you can account for numerous scenarios.  In this short video, Daniel Carter will discuss externalities in strategic planning.  Watch as Daniel unpacks this topic. Video Transcription: I’m Daniel Carter and I want to talk today about dealing with some of the externalities… Read More

  In this short video, Daniel Carter will discuss the evolution of microhospitals as he highlights two examples. Video Transcription: I’m Daniel Carter. I want to talk a little bit today about the evolution of microhospitals as it pertains to regulations.  To do that I want to talk about a couple of specific states. First… Read More

Changing market forces across the healthcare industry will have major reverberations across key provider, consumer, and other stakeholder communities that operate both within and outside of traditional healthcare system networks. And as a new and dramatically different type of healthcare delivery model emerges, healthcare executives can no longer afford to embrace a “business as usual”… Read More

In this short video, Dawn Carter will discuss three business giants coming together and how that will directly impact the future of healthcare. Video Transcription: I’m Dawn Carter. There was an exciting announcement recently about three business giants coming together to focus on the healthcare delivery and cost reduction for their employee populations. There has… Read More

  In this short video, Daniel Cater will discuss how microhospital can fit into your strategy using our Healthytown™ model. Video Transcription: I’m Daniel Carter, and I want to talk a bit today about how Microhospitals fit in a Healthytown strategy.  For those of you who have followed our Healthytown strategy discussion over the years,… Read More

In this short video, Dawn Carter will discuss four principles behind transformed care delivery. Video Transcription: I’m Dawn Carter. I want to spend a few minutes talking about principles of transformed care delivery. If we have a transformed payment system that incentivizes the most effective care in the least costly setting, how will that transform… Read More

In this short video, Brian Ackerman will discuss the fundamentals of recruitment planning. Video Transcription: Hello. My name’s Brian Ackerman, and I want to talk to you a little bit about your recruitment strategy and the key puzzle pieces that go into that planning process. If you’ve heard me talk before, either in this setting,… Read More

In this short video, Daniel Carter will discuss the characteristics of a microhospital. Video Transcription: I’m Daniel Carter and I wanted to talk a bit today about microhospitals. In healthcare strategy, we often hear terms that cause a lot of excitement, and sometimes, that excitement is for good reason and sometimes, it ends up being… Read More

In this video, Dawn Carter discusses the principles of transformed payment and presents four inherent principles in that system. Video Transcription: I’m Dawn Carter. I want to spend a few minutes today talking about the principles of transformed payment. The healthcare industry in the United States has a long history of care delivery being heavily… Read More

In this short video, Brian Ackerman will discuss the key considerations for a community needs assessment. Video Transcription: My name’s Brian Ackerman. I want to talk to you a little bit about physician needs assessments and some of the key considerations you might want to factor in to your needs assessment process. Given all the… Read More

  In this short video, Dawn Carter will briefly discuss the future of medicare and what the future holds without a transformed payment system. Video Transcription:  I’m Dawn Carter. I want to talk today about the Medicare wall that we are running toward. We’ve talked in other blogs about how we believe that the financing… Read More

Is competition always healthy in the health care world? Dawn Carter and Richard Bruch go “On the Record” about possible changes to the “certificate of need” laws in North Carolina.