If you have questions about the new Rural Emergency Hospital model, we finally have some answers. Two years since Congress passed the law authorizing Emergency Rural Hospitals – and two months before billing can begin – we now know exactly what the new provider type will entail. With yesterday’s release of the Final Rule for… Read More

Warning: The next paragraph is going to sound like a brag, but it’s not. It’s actually leading up to a big worry that I have for hospitals and health systems, so please keep reading. At Ascendient, we’ve been doing healthcare consulting for nearly 30 years, and I can honestly say that I’ve never seen higher… Read More

You’ve heard the old adage to “fail fast, fail often, fail forward”? That seems to be the business philosophy at Amazon, which recently announced it would shutter the upstart Amazon Health division that had caused widespread consternation in traditional healthcare circles. (As healthcare strategy consultants, we shared some of that consternation, as you can see… Read More

Last week, CMS released its final rule for the Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS), and a larger-than-expected boost in operating payments got much of the attention from healthcare journalists and membership associations like the AHA. But beyond the immediate (and somewhat deceiving*) headline that reimbursement will increase by $2.6 billion, we at Ascendient were… Read More

The top line: Accessible primary care is critical to population health – but problematic for healthcare facility planning. In one NC county, a healthcare system is partnering with a local church to improve accessibility with minimal investment in bricks and mortar. Nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Cleveland County is one of the… Read More

As Covid-19 slowly transitions from pandemic to endemic status, state and county governments all across the country are reckoning with the lessons of a two-year public health emergency. One area getting a lot more focus: public health strategic planning. The Build Back Better Act requested more than $16 billion for healthcare infrastructure, including $7 billion… Read More

With Medicare Part A facing insolvency as early as 2026, CMS is looking to make dramatic moves. The CMS Innovation Center is aiming to have 100 percent of Medicare beneficiaries in some sort of accountable care relationship by 2030 – a shift that would have major revenue implications for hospitals and health systems. A closer… Read More

As I write this, the debate over America’s debt ceiling has reached a fever pitch, with dire predictions of mass layoffs, delayed Social Security checks, skyrocketing mortgage rates, and more. All that sound and fury is not a bad thing, since the consequences of a default would be catastrophic – a “meteor” on a collision… Read More

It seems like everyone is grading hospitals these days. Safety, value, clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction – the list of metrics for judging a “good” hospital just keeps growing and growing, so maybe it’s no wonder that the American Hospital Association is pushing back on the newest report card from the Lown Institute. Now in its… Read More

My Roomba just arrived, and I am beyond thrilled! Fed up with my inability to keep up with my golden retriever’s shedding, on a whim I did about 10 minutes of research on robotic vacuums and then added one to my Amazon cart. Less than 24 hours later, this game-changer arrived at my door. A… Read More