E-Witch

Inpatient rehabilitation hospital and home health operator Encompass Health had a minor increase in its 2020 fourth quarter net operating revenue but predicts it will have a stronger 2021, the company said Tuesday.

The Birmingham, Ala.-based company reported net operating revenue of $1.2 billion during the fourth quarter of 2020, up 3% from the previous year. During the third quarter, Encompass experienced a 1% increase in net operating revenue.

“We are pleased with our performance in 2020, which demonstrates the resiliency of our business model,” said Encompass Health President and CEO Mark Tarr said in a prepared statement. “As we look ahead into 2021, we remain confident in our business and long-term prospects.”

The provider projected its operating revenue will rise 8% in 2021.

Encompass Health said growth was tied to favorable pricing in the inpatient rehabilitation segment but noted that those gains were partially offset by lower

A flurry of recent mandates will completely upend the negotiating table between payers and providers, but how the final contracts will change going forward all depend on enforcement.

Although most negotiations between hospital systems and insurers have been finalized for 2021, Rick Kes, a senior analyst at RSM, said recent mandates around surprise billing, price transparency and the antitrust exemption for health insurers will reverberate throughout the healthcare industry for years to come. In late January, CMS also approved a prior-authorization rule that requires payers to build application programming interfaces between their records and providers’, in a move to speed decisions about whether patient procedures are covered. The changes will phase in during 2023 and 2024.

Kes expects the new laws to accelerate hospitals’ move to value-based arrangements with insurers, and drive investment in consumer-centric digital tools that help individuals compare procedure prices between systems.

“The negotiation table has dramatically