Beyond the Bottom Line: Assessing Charity Care, Community Benefits, and Tax Exemptions in Nonprofit Hospitals.

Goal: This study aimed to compare the value of tax exemptions and community benefits across various nonprofit hospitals and show how hospital and geographical characteristics can explain the values.

Methods: Data from 2017 to 2021 Internal Revenue Service Form 990s were used to evaluate 17 types of community benefits in nonprofit hospitals and assess six categories of tax benefits. Descriptive analyses compared charity care, community benefits, and estimated tax exemptions among nonprofit hospitals while considering variations in teaching status, location (rurality), and US region.

Designing, implementing and evaluating multidisciplinary healthcare training programmes in the wartime humanitarian context of Ukraine.

Introduction: Civilian healthcare workers (HCW) and medical facilities are directly and indirectly impacted by armed conflict. In the Russia-Ukraine war, acute trauma care needs grew, the workforce was destabilised by HCW migrating or shifting roles to meet conflict needs, and facilities faced surge events. Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive (CBRNE) exposure risks created unique preparedness needs.

Discovery and development of INNA-051, a TLR2/6 agonist for the prevention of complications resulting from viral respiratory infections.

Viral respiratory infection is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. The diversity of viruses implicated, coupled with their propensity for mutation, ignited an interest in host-directed antiviral therapies effective across a wide range of viral variants. Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are potential targets for the development of broad-spectrum antivirals given their central role in host immune defenses.

Lower Commercial Rates for Breast Surgical Procedures are Associated with Socioeconomic Disadvantage: A Transparency in Coverage Analysis.

Background: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) implemented the Transparency in Coverage Rule in 2022, which requires payers to disclose commercial rates for the first time in the history of the US healthcare system. The purpose of this study was to characterize payer-disclosed commercial facility rates and examine the relationship with county-level social disadvantage for common breast surgical procedures.

Materials And Methods: We performed a cross-sectional study of 2023 pricing data for 14 ablative and reconstructive breast procedures from Turquoise Health.

Within-Hospital Price Gaps Across National Insurers.

Importance: Commercial prices for hospital care are high and vary widely in the US. Employers and state policymakers are exploring reference-based pricing (RBP) to set their payment rates as multiples of Medicare prices; understanding the range of commercial price variation within a hospital is important for calculating the appropriate price targets that are effectively low to generate savings but also feasible and viable to local hospital markets.

Objective: To examine within-hospital maximum-to-minimum commercial hospital price gaps negotiated by 5 national insurers and estimate plan savings if the minimum prices within each hospital are used as new payment level.