Summary
Not just hospitals, but many players will see receivables drop including wellness and disease management companies, imaging diagnostics and labs, and soon manufacturers.
Analysis
The article titled "Hospitals See Drop in Paying Patients" illustrates a sobering trend in healthcare receivables: the deferring of medical treatments due not only to the current financial situation, but also the long term implications of high deductible health plans and the accelerating downward trend of employer sponsored health insurance.
The US healthcare system as a whole is overly skewed to employer based health finance (re: insurance) which will increasingly result in larger and longer swings in system wide contractions and expansions.
Unlike most other countries that rely on lower levels of employer based finance, the US system will lag in recovery.
This will impact employer based wellness and disease management companies like Healthways as both employees and employers drag out purchase decisions. Diagnostic imaging will quickly impact service providers such as Nighthawk while shortly impacting manufacturers such as GE Healthcare.
Hospitals for some time now have seen their bad debt increase from insured patients. Now, with the worsening financial and employment markets these trends are spreading throughout the sector.
