When it comes to prescription drugs, are we getting what we pay for?
Two recent analyses of expensive medications indicate that many drugs are being priced above their actual clinical benefit. More
Blog
Too Many Ills! Too Many Pills!
The Lown Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, argues in its 2019 report, Medication Overload: America’s Other Drug Problem, that Americans are experiencing an epidemic of medication that is particularly harmful to older adults. According to the report, more than 40% of older adults take five or more prescription medicines daily, and 20% take ten drugs or more. More
‘Don’t let me die.’ A Cleveland neighborhood grapples with the loss of its ER
“I think what's interesting to me about Saint Vincent Charity Medical Center is that they do really very well on our measures of clinical outcomes and of value, which is to say avoiding unnecessary treatments and, you know, being cost efficient in what they do,” Dr. Vikas Saini said. More
Medical debt and community benefit spending: How states are taking action
A detailed recap of our Fair Share launch event, featuring health policymakers and experts from California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Oregon. More
Do Mass. hospitals give more than they get in tax breaks? One nonprofit says ‘nope.’
"It’s an open secret that not all spending hospitals can claim as community benefits are actually meaningful for community health," the nonprofit's president, Vikas Saini, and policy analyst, Judith Garber, wrote. "The broad definition of community benefit — one of many loopholes in the U.S. tax code — allows hospitals to include spending on items that don’t directly address community health needs. That’s why we focused on the spending that matters most for local communities, some of which are losing tens of millions of dollars in property tax revenue to support nonprofit hospitals." More
Local hospital execs received millions in bonuses during pandemic
“In the last 30 years, there’s been a huge increase in the amount of administrators in hospitals and the money that’s flowing through the health care system,” said Dr. Vikas Saini, a physician and president of the Lown Institute, a health care think tank.
More
Local hospitals weathered financial storm from COVID
"Hospitals that serve working people tend to have lower margins, lower profits, and less of a cushion in the event of a crisis," said Dr. Vikas Saini, a physician and the president of the Lown Institute, a health care think tank. More
‘Houston, We Have A Problem’: Abandoning Their Mission, Nonprofit Hospitals Have Veered Far Off Course
According to a new report by the Lown Institute, close to 80% of more than 1,700 nonprofit hospitals studied “spent less on charity care and community investment than the estimated value of their tax breaks.” The report also found that this so-called “fair share” deficit, which was $14.2 billion in 2020, was “enough to erase the medical debts of 18 million Americans or rescue the finances of more than 600 rural hospitals at risk of closure.” More
26 hospitals in NY don’t pay ‘fair share’ to justify tax exemptions, report finds. See the list
Are New York hospitals spending enough on charity care and community investments to justify receiving tax exemptions? The answer is no, says nonpartisan health policy think tank Lown Institute, for a total of 26 hospitals spread across the state.
More
What’s up with hospital finances?
How are hospital finances doing? The short answer is, it depends on the type of hospital... More
LISTEN: Hospitals expanding across central Ohio, around the country
Every major hospital in central Ohio is expanding, as some are building bigger facilities and some are including more in-patient beds. That’s also true for the rest of the state and across the U.S. What’s driving this construction boom and who will fill all the beds and pick up the tab?
Guests:
More
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee Blasts UPMC Over Charitable Donations
"We already knew UPMC was ripping us off, exploiting our hospital workers to the point of a staffing crisis that puts our loved ones’ lives at risk, and leaving our most marginalized communities behind without access to care," Lee, a Pittsburgh Democrat, said in a statement. "But the fact that we now know that UPMC is cheating our community out of $246 million on the backs of taxpayers is shameful beyond reprieve." More
Report: Nonprofit hospitals not paying their ‘fair share’ to the community
“There needs to be a paradigm shift,” Saini said. “What we need from hospitals in the 21st century is different from how we used to do things. Our goal with this is to ask a series of questions, ask everybody … to examine the question: how we should be doing this? Because the way we’re doing it, is not really meeting the needs of communities.” More
Study: 2 metro Atlanta hospitals listed among most charitable in the U.S.
“We’re starting to see policymakers and communities hold hospitals accountable for their social responsibility,” said Dr. Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, said during a webinar Tuesday about the report. “For example, state and local officials in Atlanta and the Georgia NAACP recently filed a federal complaint against Wellstar Health System for closing two hospitals known for serving the Black community while planning to open a new hospital in a whiter and wealthier area.” More
Report: Nonprofit hospitals make billions more in tax breaks than they reinvest into communities
"Americans desperately need hospitals to use their billions in tax breaks as intended: to promote health while relieving the problems of medical debt and access to care," said Dr. Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute. "These are charitable organizations and they should do a better job at prioritizing social responsibility over profitability." More
Are Nonprofit Hospitals Really Giving Back More Than They Get?
"The paradigm we've been operating in for the last 30, 40, 50 years is kind of broken, and I don't think you have to ask too many doctors or nurses before you get a lot of consensus on that point," Saini told MedPage Today. "We're asking people to start thinking, 'What could this look like that would be different, that's truly beneficial to the community?'" More
25 hospitals where charity care exceeds tax breaks
Lown Institute, a nonpartisan healthcare think tank, released a new report April 11 examining the finances of 1,773 nonprofit hospitals in the U.S. The report — which does not include large health systems like Renton, Wash.-based Providence; Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente; Somerville, Mass.-based Mass General Brigham; Cleveland Clinic; and Detroit-based Henry Ford — found that some hospitals fell short on and others exceeded expected investments in their communities. More
Most Nonprofit Hospitals Skimp on Care for Poor, Report Says
“The major disconnect between the real health needs of communities and how the money flows is the fundamental problem,” said Vikas Saini, M.D., president of the Lown Institute. “And the nonprofit tax exemption is a lens on that problem.” More
Lown Institute: Even after community investment, nonprofit hospitals’ tax savings enough to rescue ‘every rural hospital at risk of closure’
Lown found that 77% of the reviewed hospitals spent less on community investments and charity care than the estimated value of their tax breaks. The group wrote that many facilities that had the largest deficit “also received millions in COVID-19 relief funding and ended the year with high net incomes.” More
WATCH: Which hospitals are spending their fair share on communities?
Nonprofit hospitals receive substantial tax breaks worth tens of billions each year. But how many hospitals actually give back to communities as much as they receive in tax benefits? More