(May 16, 2025) – This year, the Kansas Hospital Association has been working broadly to tell the hospital finance story. KHA started these efforts with our annual campaign around economic impact, followed by our updated financial infographic highlighting Kansas hospitals' overall financial challenges. We then launched a one page infographic on Medicaid, followed by a one page infographic on Medicare.
This week, KHA is sharing with our members the next area of focus for our Financial Awareness Campaign: Commercial Payers. We hope this new infographic focusing on the impact of commercial payers will help our members kick-start education and conversation about commercial payers. According to a study conducted by PYA, a correlation can be formed between financial losses in Kansas hospitals compared to hospital payments received by Kansas’ dominant commercial payers.
Next week, KHA will publicly release the full study in addition to pursuing interviews and earned media. KHA will follow up with public education through statewide social media. We encourage our members to have local conversations on the findings in this report as well as the impacts commercial payers, Medicare and Medicaid have on your hospital finances and the ability to provide care in your community.
Resources to help our members tell the story about health care finance are available in Box.com. It includes print resources in this campaign, template social media posts and other communications tools. In a nutshell, ongoing trends with Kansas commercial payers have left Kansas hospitals with less money to fill the gap in what Medicare, Medicaid, underinsured and uninsured patients do not pay for the cost of their care.
We hope all these tools will help hospitals to have meaningful conversations about financial challenges and make positive changes. If you have questions about this campaign, please contact Cindy Samuelson at csamuelson@kha-net.org. If you have questions about hospital finance, please contact Shannan Flach at sflach@kha-net.org.
--Cindy Samuelson