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Avera Health is selling its clinician-to-clinician telehealth business Avera eCare to a private-equity firm in a deal expected to close this year.
Aquiline Capital Partners, a private equity firm based in New York and London, will acquire Avera eCare, which connects specialists to local clinicians at facilities across the U.S. The new owners will rename the operation Avel eCare and carve it out from its own business.
Some telehealth services previously operated by Avera eCare, such as Avera s virtual urgent care and specialty consultations, will remain with Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Avera.
Avera launched Avera eCare in the 1990s, decades before the the COVID-19 crisis boosted telehealth adoption. Avera eCare provides behavioral health, emergency medicine, hospitalist, intensive care, pharmacy and senior care services to roughly 600 sites that include rural hospitals, outpatient clinics, long-term-care facilities and schools in 32 states.
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Hospitals and health systems experienced the lowest turnover rate for CEOs in nearly a decade as top executives put off retirement or other reasons for a job change during the pandemic.
According to its annual look at CEO turnover, the American College of Healthcare Executives found that 16% of CEO positions changed hands last year. That compares to 17% in 2019 and 18% each year from 2014 to 2018. The highest turnover rate in the last decade was 20% in 2013.
The pandemic seemed to play a major role in hospitals delaying leadership transitions. [CEO s] reluctance to leave their positions seemed to come from a sense of duty and a sense of care to their organizations and not wanting to disrupt leadership in the middle of the pandemic, said Jordan Shields, a partner with Juniper Advisory.
Hospitals posted higher profits in second half of 2020 even as COVID cases soared
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As COVID-19 cases reached unprecedented levels in the final months of 2020, some of the country s biggest health systems made more money than they did in the comparable 2019 period even without counting their federal grants.
Company executives pointed to two big contributors: sicker than usual patients and a higher-than-expected ratio of privately insured patients, both on the COVID and non-COVID sides. The pandemic narrowed the subset of people willing to visit hospitals. Those that did tended to have very serious illnesses or injuries and they also were more likely to have commercial insurance, which pays hospitals much more than Medicare and Medicaid.
Hospitals, nursing homes get more time to file cost reports
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CMS is giving providers an extra two months to file their annual cost reports, an extension that s likely to bring relief to hospitals struggling with influxes of coronavirus patients.
Providers typically get five months from when their reporting period ends to file the reports, which are required for any provider that accepts Medicare, including hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies and others. Now, they ll get that plus a 60-day extension, the agency announced this week in a frequently asked questions update.
Cost reports contain a wealth of information on providers facilities, volumes and finances, including their costs and charges, uncompensated care and wage information. Unlike health systems quarterly and annual financial reports, which allow them to report at the system-wide level, cost reports are done at the individual facility level.