In 2019, Northwell Health President and CEO Michael Dowling urged other US healthcare leaders—via a full-page ad in the New York Times and phone calls to hospital CEOs—to join him in a new campaign to combat gun violence as a public health issue.

“I got zero response,” he told employees of New York State’s largest health system in March 2023.

Four years after its first public call for action (and several high-profile mass shootings later), Dowling said Northwell—which established a Center for Gun Violence Prevention in 2020 and has held four public forums on the issue since 2019—got a much different response.

“We now have about 50 CEOs,” he said, noting that each exec committed to the effort in a late-February full-page ad published in the Times. Even more have since reached out to join his National Health Care CEO Council on Gun Violence Prevention and Safety.

“There’s a lot of traction here,” Dowling said. “You’ve just got to stay with it. Because it is our obligation. It is our responsibility.”

Northwell’s experience underscores the growing interest among hospital leaders in tackling gun violence as a public health and health equity priority—action that some clinicians like Peter Masiakos, a pediatric trauma surgeon and codirector of the Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) gun violence center, have long promoted.

Hospitals and health systems across the US are increasingly implementing new initiatives that focus on gun violence prevention and community health, often partnering together (as in the case of Northwell) or with groups like the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention (HAVI).

The trend comes as the CDC reported nearly 49,000 gun-related deaths in the US in 2021, and the highest rates of firearm suicide and homicide deaths in three decades.

Keep reading here.—SY

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Shannon at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Shannon for her number on Signal.

It’s shaping up to be yet another tough financial year for hospitals, though not as bad as last year, according to consulting firm Kaufman Hall’s February National Hospital Flash Report.

The report—published monthly using data from more than 900 hospitals—found that hospitals are performing better financially (so far) than they did in 2022, which was the worst financial year since the start of the pandemic.

“We’re starting to see operating margins fluctuate far less than they did over the last couple of years,” said Erik Swanson, SVP of Kaufman Hall’s data and analytics group. “Volumes are beginning to become a bit more consistent, although in many cases still below levels that they were several years ago.”

Covid-19 has played a big role in the uncertain hospital finance landscape. Hospitals reported a huge spike in Covid cases from the Omicron variant in January 2022, which meant hospital resources were strained from the outset of the year, said Swanson.

Still, hospitals are performing worse this year compared to 2020 and 2021, and operating margins in January 2023 were down slightly compared to the end of 2022, the Flash Report stated.

The major challenges hospitals face in 2023—lower patient volumes and higher expenses—are the same issues they’ve been dealing with, according to the report.

Compared to pre-pandemic levels, overall hospital expenses are up just shy of 20%, said Swanson. Inflation is partially responsible, but expenses are also rising due to increased use of more expensive contract labor and labor shortages that lead hospitals to offer higher wages to retain staff. Lower-wage jobs now also have to compete with Amazon, Walmart, and other companies that have raised wages, Swanson said.

Keep reading here.—MA

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Maia at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Maia for her number on Signal.

The opioid epidemic has not only taken the lives of nearly 1 million people in the last 24 years, but it has also cost the US healthcare system tens of billions of dollars annually.

The healthcare system spends an estimated $95.4 billion, or 7.9% of all hospital expenditures, related to opioid use disorder (OUD) each year, according to a January analysis from health services firm Premier.

Premier data scientists conducted the analysis using the firm’s database of hospital discharge summaries. They analyzed all discharges for emergency department outpatient visits and inpatient admissions that took place in Q1 2017 and Q1 2022.

The analysis found that 66 million emergency department outpatient visits and 760,000 inpatient admissions annually are for patients with OUD.

And that’s likely an undercount because “opioid use disorder is very frequently underdiagnosed in hospital records,” Noa Krawczyk, an assistant professor of population health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine who specializes in OUD treatment research, told Healthcare Brew.

“It’s really striking how many hospitalizations and health-related costs we’re having related to opioid use disorder,” said Krawczyk.

The costs of treatment. Emergency room visits per OUD patient cost 32.5% more and inpatient visits cost 8% more compared to patients without an OUD diagnosis, the Premier analysis found. And the average outpatient visit for an OUD patient comes out to $1,264, while the average inpatient visit for an OUD patient costs $15,763, the report estimated.

The analysis provides just a snapshot of how much treating OUD costs, though, since it evaluates costs incurred during a hospital stay. Also, the majority of treatment for OUD takes place in an outpatient setting, according to Krawczyk.

Keep reading here.—MA

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: It costs people who menstruate about $20 for period products each cycle, or about $18,000 over an average woman’s lifetime. (Axios)

Quote: “I know either way he will use it against me. If I told him before, which I’m not, he would use it as [a way to] try to stay with me. And after the fact, I know he will try to act like he has some right to the decision.”—A Texas woman, whose ex-husband impregnated her, in a text message before her ex sued her friends for allegedly helping the woman obtain an abortion (Texas Tribune)

Read: Federal clinics in Texas used to dole out birth control to teenagers—until a Christian father sued the state’s Department of Health and Human Services this past December. (Kaiser Health News)

Read, watch, advance equity: LetsGetChecked’s Let’s Talk About Health Equity Report examines how Americans really feel about healthcare today. Join their March 30 webinar as experts explore how at-home care can address modern patient challenges.*

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Catch up on the top Healthcare Brew stories you may have missed:

• Why CVS and Walgreens are targeting value-based care
• Kaiser Permanente targets gun violence as health equity issue
• Direct care worker shortage hurts community-based services, study finds