New Solution Helps to Address Unfair Commercial Health Care Plans

On behalf of its members, the AHA has been tracking commercial health insurance practices that contribute to burnout and make it more difficult for some Americans to access the care they need. A recent white paper released by the AHA highlights the impact that anti-competitive practices and inappropriate delays and denials have had on hospitals and patients. This paper follows a report issued earlier this year that addresses the same topic, and also identifies a number of solutions at the national level to improve oversight and help build a health system that better serves patients and protects clinicians from burdensome health insurance practices that take them away from patient care. To help members reduce the significant operational challenges caused by some of these commercial payer issues, the AHA has also launched a new solution, the AHA Vitality Index.

Gloria Kupferman, AHA’s chief data strategy officer, describes how this new solution gives members access to aggregated, de-identified hospital data with standardized metrics on denials, reimbursement and claims processing to use for analyzing operational and financial efficiency. Read the blog.

A January 26, 2022, AHA webinar will explore how hospitals and health systems can leverage their data to hold payers accountable.