Don’t Cry for Managed Care Companies
Q2 2009 Managed Care Profits Stagnate
by Carl Mercurio
Second-quarter 2009 net income for the healthcare operations of 10 top managed care organizations rose 1% to $2.095 billion on revenues of $65.433 billion, up 5.6%, according to a tally in the latest issue of Managed Healthcare Market Report.
The figures include United Healthcare Services (United Healthcare, Ovations, AmeriChoice) Aetna Healthcare and Cigna HealthCare. Including the corporate parents, second-quarter net income rose 32% to $2.776 billion on revenues of $68.67 billion, up 5.2% — largely because in 2008 United took nearly $1 billion in charges to settle class action litigation related to its stock options practices.
Expect Stricter HIPAA Enforcement
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) will now be responsible for enforcing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) security rule in addition to the privacy rule. (The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services was previously responsible for the security rule). This consolidation of HIPAA enforcement activity highlights the Administration’s heightened scrutiny of security and privacy of health information. In fact, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 mandates enhanced patient privacy rights and physician practice requirements, increased financial penalties for violations of the privacy rule and the security rules and allocated additional resources for enforcement.
How will this affect you? Well if your group practice has not yet put in place a plan to implement the Red Flag rules, you will be at risk of a HIPPA violation once the enforcement begins.
