Many prognosticators are projecting a coming economic crisis caused by student debt. This is typically focused around an inability to pay off the principal of the loan. But it really appears that we are also setting ourselves up for a real problem with the cost of debt. Overall new…
Los Angeles County, CA and Cook County, IL (Chicago) have 117 CMS rated hospitals between them and over 15 million residents. Yet, there is not a single five-star hospital in either county. In this mini-series, we have examined the profile of the current 188 five-star hospitals as it marks its…
Nell Gluckman of The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote an interesting piece about the challenges of public cutbacks in the state of Louisiana. The premise of the article is that there are trickle-down implications of state cutbacks in tuition, faculty morale, and curriculum. Louisiana has passed along substantial tuition increases to its…
Postsecondary institutions gave over $17 billion in financial aid in 2015. This represented a 3% increase from 2014. However, the number of student receiving the financial aid declined 3% so the average financial aid per student when looked at over the entire postsecondary landscape actually increased 6%. We used data…
It is hard to believe but it has been about one year since the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released its initial hospital rating system. At that time 102 hospitals earned the coveted five-star rating. The most recent ratings show 188 hospitals with the five-star rating out of roughly…
There have been many studies and articles that focus on the topic of risks and volume. For example, a U.S. News and World Report article cites mortality rates for hip replacement at three times the national average. Are the busiest hospitals the best for lowering risk? Using analysis from…
The number of students living on-campus for the approximately 4,500 non-state institutions has increased from just over 43% in 2011 to nearly 53% just four years later in 2015. The pie graph below shows the movement from 2011 to 2015 with the yellow slice indicating the percentage of students living…
While Medicare inpatient procedure volume has remained flat since 2013, infections are a significant area of high volume change. The treemap below from the Inpatient Procedure Analysis Interactive shows the inpatient volume growth by procedure with color coding by volume change from 2013-2015 using the Medicare Provider and Analysis Review…
After three straight years of 3-5% increases, room and board annual growth has finally slowed to a more pedestrian 2-3%. In recent years, universities have invested heavily in on-campus facilities and presumably passed these costs to the students at a rate greater than inflation. One administrator once told me that on-campus facilities…
The U.S. Census recently released its 2015 Nonemployer Statistics. This data is the companion data set to the County Business Patterns. Nonemployer Statistics is an annual data set that provides county economic data for businesses that have no paid employees and are subject to federal income tax. The data consist…
The sticker pricing game has been in place a long time. No one ever pays full sticker price for items such as jewelry or cars. That is probably why University of Michigan came under scrutiny for its free tuition guarantee for families with income under $65,000. Cynics pointed this out…
The U.S. Department of Education announced yesterday the beginning of the process to rollback and rework Obama-era rules under the gainful employment regulations. These rules, which took years to enact, were designed to hold career-preparation programs accountable for the outcomes of their graduates. The announcement establishes rule making committees to…