The majority of proposed hospital mergers "present no competitive issues" and positively benefit communities, the American Hospital Association wrote in an Aug. 18 letter to federal officials. However, studies have found hospital and provider consolidation leads to increased prices for healthcare consumers.

Three of the major for-profit hospital chains operate 329 acute care hospitals across the U.S. 

At least 10 hospital and health system credit rating upgrades have occurred since Jan. 1.

Seventy-eight percent of health systems use or are implementing automation in their revenue cycle operations, according to survey results released Aug. 19 by healthcare RCM automation company AKASA. That's a 12 percentage point increase compared to the survey results AKASA released last October.

Ten hospitals and health systems recently posted job listings seeking revenue cycle management expertise.

Edgecombe Community College in Tarboro, N.C., offers the best online program for an associate's degree that will give students the credentials they need for medical billing and coding, according to College Values Online.

The following eight hospital and health system credit rating downgrades occurred in the past six months. They are listed in alphabetical order. 

White Americans have the highest yearly per-person healthcare spending compared to patients of other races, even after considering age and health condition, according to a study published Aug. 17 by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle.

Cedars-Sinai provided $30 million in grants to organizations addressing care access, housing, food and health equity in its last fiscal year, a significant increase for the Los Angeles-based health system.

Health systems are losing out on $2.5 billion in revenue per year from physical therapy leakage, according to an Aug. 17 report from Luna, an on-demand physical therapy provider. 

Providence, a 52-hospital system in Renton, Wash., saw its operating loss shrink through the first six months of 2021, when compared to the same period last year, according to its most recent earnings report. 

Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose, Calif., will lose its Medicare contract in October unless it corrects deficiencies outlined in a 65-page report, according to NBC Bay Area, citing the CMS report that is not yet publicly available. 

Minneapolis-based Allina Health saw its revenue, operating income and net income grow in the second quarter of 2021, according to recently released financial documents. 

CMS pays new hospitals three times more for capital costs than it pays established hospitals, according to an Aug. 16 report from HHS' Office of the Inspector General. 

The American Medical Association said Aug. 16 the Current Procedural Terminology code set is ready for third doses of Pfizer's and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines.

Below are 10 hospitals and health systems that recently posted job listings seeking CFOs.

CMS has refrained from penalizing providers who haven't complied with its price transparency rule, Bloomberg Law reported Aug. 16. 

Allegheny Health Network, a Pittsburgh-based health system owned by Highmark Health, narrowed its operating loss in the first two quarters of this year as volumes rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

The White House said Aug. 13 that it would allocate billions of dollars to help hospitals in rural communities combat the COVID-19 pandemic and stay financially viable. 

Each year many hospitals lose millions of dollars due to denied or rejected claims, with especially significant lost opportunity from outpatient infusion claims. These denials and rejections are often attributed to a complex, reactive remittance process with multiple opportunities for breakdowns to occur during the approval process. These breakdowns often have negative financial impacts on both the system and the patient, as well as a negative impact on the patient experience.