June 28, 2024

Hello NAW Subscribers -

I hope you like this issue of National Accounts Weekly.

Sincerely,

John Pritchard

President of ANAE

Publisher of The Journal of Healthcare Contracting

Survey finds that 2024 will be another hard year for nurses

A new survey conducted by AMN Healthcare found that 80% of nurses will see no improvement in 2024 compared to the previous year – 42% said that 2024 will be the same for nurses as 2023 and 38% said it will be worse than last year.

This survey marks the continued challenges that healthcare workers face each day. Due to things like staffing shortages, inadequate pay, and long hours on the job, many nurses are contemplating a change in careers in 2024.

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Vizient partners with Adventist Health for solutions in spend management

Vizient welcomed Adventist Health to its customer base for solutions in spend management and strategic growth. The agreement was effective in the last quarter of 2023.

The Adventist Health agreement includes access to solutions that will drive cost efficiencies, including:

Vizient Commit for aggregated purchasing in select medical-surgical categories.
PPI Commit for aggregated purchasing in physician preference items.
Purchased services-indirect Spend for analysis and savings opportunities on more than 350 categories.
Supply Analytics for insights into spend, price data, customized analytics and benchmarking.
Pharmacy Analytics for insights across more than 12,000 products and services.

For clinical and operational improvement, Adventist Health gains access to:

Vizient Clinical Data Base for high-quality, accurate and transparent data on patient outcomes, enabling benchmarking against peers.
Vizient Operational Data Base for transparent, comparative insights on the operational characteristics of hospital departments to support performance improvement, budgeting and cost reduction initiatives.
Member Networks for data-driven thought leadership, leading practice sharing, problem solving and member roundtables.

Intermountain Layton Hospital to open a new ambulatory surgery center

Intermountain Layton Hospital will open a new ambulatory surgery center in August that will create 40 new jobs and lower patient costs. The new state-of-the-art center will have four operating rooms where patients can have surgery and go home the same day. During a ribbon-cutting ceremony in June, Dr. Michael Dee, a surgeon with Intermountain Health, said the goal of the center is to get patients taken care of in a high-quality setting, away from sick people staying in the hospital, and get them back home as soon as possible so they can recover more quickly. In addition, since the ambulatory surgery center is outside of a hospital setting and doesn’t require long stays, it keeps costs down.

The center is one of three opening across the state this year and will be the 11th functioning in the state from Logan to St. George.

HealthTrust names COO of GPO Operations

HealthTrust Performance Group, a leading performance improvement organization with an exclusive membership of 1,800 hospitals and 70,000+ non-acute sites of care, announced that Jocelyn Bradshaw, Senior Vice President of Strategic Sourcing, has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer of GPO Operations, effective June 1, 2024. The role was held by Michael Berryhill who was elevated to President of GPO Operations in October 2023.

Bradshaw will be responsible for the operational activities of the GPO, member operations, and sourcing across the core, pharmacy, commercial, medical device, human resources and PBM portfolios. Additionally, she will oversee the company’s Resource Optimization & Innovation division, which serves members through Regard® Medical Supplies, Regard® Clinical Packaging Solutions, and ROi Supply Chain.

Bradshaw draws from more than 25 years of experience in optimizing supply chains, driving operational growth and leading sourcing processes and teams. Her résumé includes leadership roles supporting supply chain, contracting and marketing with MedAssets, Broadlane and Johnson & Johnson Medical. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Information Systems from the University of Texas, Arlington.

Tenet's new era

Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare Corp. (NYSE: THC) reported first quarter net operating revenues of $5.37 billion, beating the consensus of $5.15 billion, and adjusted its fiscal year 2024 earnings outlook by an extra $215 million.

This while the company sold select hospital operations like two California hospitals for $550 million to Adventist Health in March and the University of California agreed to buy four hospitals from Tenet for $975 million in February. It has entered into a revenue cycle services partnership with Adventist Health.

But it’s positioned to replace the pre-tax earnings of those sold facilities and others, according to Chairman and CEO Dr. Saum Sutaria, due to its outperformance in the first quarter as well as adding multiple ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) to its portfolio. Tenet operates in two segments – acute-care hospitals and ASCs. And ASCs are valued more highly than hospitals.

Intermountain Health supply chain organization expands

Intermountain Health’s Supply Chain Organization is celebrating a 40,000 square foot expansion at its state-of-the-art warehouse in Midvale, Utah.

The new upgrade allows for a 30 percent more bulk space storage for vital medical supplies, which is a part of its efforts for cost savings and emergency preparedness.

The upgrade allows for supplies currently being stored in rented spaces to be consolidated under one roof at the Intermountain supply chain warehouse. This step alone will save more than $12 million annually. Extra savings also comes from avoiding thousands of unnecessary trucking miles to ship supplies back and forth from other warehouses.

Walmart Health closing all 51 location

Walmart Health is closing all 51 primary care health centers across five states over a 45- to 90-day span since its announcement on April 30. It’s also shuttering its telehealth service Walmart Health Virtual Care.

Other retail-based commercial healthcare providers (CHPs) have seen difficulties too. Walgreens has closed many of its VillageMD clinics and Amazon has cut hundreds of roles in its healthcare division, including its primary care company One Medical. CVS Health spent billions of dollars on its clinics for seniors but fell short of its revenue projections in the first quarter and cut its earnings outlook for 2024.