WakeMed agreed to cap future price increases in Atrium merger. But who will enforce it?
WakeMed agreed to cap potential price increases in its merger with Atrium Health, but the actual language around those price caps hasn’t been released, leaving the public in the dark about how they could work. One UNC professor says questions remain about how those caps would be enforced and who they would apply to. And Rob Stephens, organizing director at the patient-advocacy group The Patients Union, said how the caps would actually function is unclear. “Patients deserve better than vague promises,” Stephens said in an interview Tuesday. Gov. Josh Stein’s office dropped oppositio n to the merger after securing a commitment to price caps from both nonprofit hospital systems. What do the price caps actually do? According to a Wake County news release, both Atrium and WakeMed agreed “for five years following the closing date, the negotiated reimbursement rate for services provided to patients who are not on Medicaid or Medicare (Part A or C) shall not increase more than 1.5 times the Medicare Payment Update for the service in that fiscal year.” What this means is for five years after the final approval of the merger, WakeMed would tie its prices to what the federal government pays hospitals for
