Portfolio

The dramatic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic recession on health care utilization, spending, and employment have been well-explored by experts tracking the US health sector. In this blog we summarize some of our recent findings on health sector price growth, using data from our Health Sector Economic Indicators (HSEI) through March 2021, focusing on changes in price trends just before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2020 Americans reduced their use of healthcare services as they postponed elective care and avoided in-person visits, yet new CMS expenditure data show health spending increased by a near-record 9.7%. We explore what drove this.

Altarum's experts explore how a new Alzheimer’s drug could increase national health expenditures by more than one percent.

Altarum experts apply their HSEI framework to provide the first comprehensive picture of 2020 health economic data for Virginia—including spending by health components and payers, employment trends, private insurance costs, and federal government support.

The confluence of a slower rebound in health care expenditures alongside rapid economywide inflation has resulted in a surprising reversal in health care’s real spending growth over the past year.

Read Altarum’s recent blog reviewing some of the underlying trends in health sector price growth, including a look at the different trajectories of private insurance and Medicare prices for health care services in 2022.

Altarum’s analysis of Virginia’s behavioral health care spending between 2014 and 2020 finds that per-enrollee spending on behavioral health care significantly increased across payers. Learn the many factors contributing to the growth.

The recent changes in nursing home staffing, census, and the number of nursing homes operating in the U.S. raises the question of how these changes have interacted to affect the extent of understaffing during and after the pandemic and the extent to which the proposed staffing standards from CMS are currently being met. Altarum's George Miller and Corey Rhyan address this question through a review of trends in nursing home resident census and staffing levels from before the start of the pandemic through the end of 2022.

In their article published today in Health Affairs Forefront, Michael Monson and Sarah Barth outline the major provisions of proposed rule by CMS aimed at enhancing care and services for individuals who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid.