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Posted by hhs 1 day ago

Nonprofit hospitals spend billions on consultants with no clear effect(www.uchicagomedicine.org)
199 points | 76 commentspage 2
mchusma 1 day ago|
My father used to say "Nonprofit doesn't mean that nobody can make a profit". Seems applicable here.
SoftTalker 1 day ago|
Mine had a slight variation, "Nonprofit doesn't mean that nobody can make money".
chmod775 1 day ago||
They're just part of the machinery for extracting money from these "nonprofits". Take a closer look at anything these paragons of virtue spend money on, and you'll find rot in every last minute detail of their day-to-day operations.
KumaBear 1 day ago|
Like many VC’s that extract wealth from companies to enrich themselves.
ninalanyon 1 day ago||
That's surely the expected behaviour. Why would a VC provide money if not to get a return?
motbus3 1 day ago||
This is anecdotic but I already worked on a company who fired staff to hire "specialized" consultants who were cheaper and more specialized, only to see their former members to join as consultants. After years of this practice they also concluded there was no saving nor benefit on the strategy but couldn't rehire the people
layoric 1 day ago||
Most of the hospital consultancy firms tied to nonprofit hospital management/board for 500 Alex.
diogenescynic 1 day ago||
I have never seen them consultants that provide a value commensurate with the prices they charge. They seem more like a proxy for fraud. When I worked at PayPal, there was a director who had an army of Deloitte consultants who just so happened to be from her husband's team at Deloitte. It was a clear conflict of interest and even though execs were aware, nothing was ever done. I imagine that's going on all over the place.
chasd00 1 day ago||
A friend of mine worked in one of the consulting practices at IBM. One of the silverbacks there had their own shadow consulting firm complete with offshore resources operating within IBM and their clients. I thought that was particularly brazen/clever.
SoftTalker 1 day ago||
Yep, "follow the money" often explains a lot of things that appear to be bizarre or irrational at first glance.
thefz 1 day ago||
"nonprofit hospitals", let it sink in.
Ekaros 1 day ago|
I take here "nonprofit" means same as it does with religions.
thefz 1 day ago||
Why should there be any profit in healthcare.
Jensson 1 day ago|||
Why should it be illegal to help people for profit? That is what doctors do, they profit a lot when they help people, they could live on much smaller salaries than they currently have but of course market economics makes it so we want to pay doctors higher salaries than they really need.
CWwdcdk7h 1 day ago|||
People don't seem medical services because they want to, they do it when they need them. It is the only industry where there price list might as well be replaced with "we will take as much as you can afford". No one can afford to be stingy with money with health and live of their loved ones on stake. It is very asymmetric situation, so it is clear to me why someone would want to ban for profit hospitals.
Jensson 1 day ago|||
Nothing you said there is related to for profit hospitals, I live in Sweden and we also have for profit hospitals here, wanting to ban for profit hospitals is just stupid. There have been many in Sweden who want to ban profits in healthcare so that you can't go and get a private doctor, do you really want to do that?

If you want to make progress in USA you must separate the crazy left from the moderate left, if you defend the people who want to ban private medicine then you aren't going anywhere. Those aren't your allies even if they pull in a similar direction, even if they sit in the same party in the two party system.

akramachamarei 1 day ago|||
> we will take as much as you can afford

This is only true where medical service providers have no competition. In fact, the state often facilitates this lack of competition.

dgellow 1 day ago|||
I think you’re addressing a different point than the person you responded to. They are asking for a positive argument regarding why healthcare itself should make a profit. That doesn’t imply banning profit, or that doctors aren’t compensated at market value
Jensson 1 day ago||
> They are asking for a positive argument regarding why healthcare itself should make a profit. That doesn’t imply banning profit, or that doctors aren’t compensated at market value

That is what it implies, there are many in the world who want to ban for profit healthcare and end pay discrimination between jobs. Nobody would ask that question in earnest, its just a rhetorical question to make a point.

boxed 1 day ago|||
Why should someone sell food for a profit? We literally DIE within DAYS of we can't get food!

You see the issue here right?

Now.. who pays is the question. Imo it must be the state, because otherwise there are too many perverse incentives.

AngryData 8 hours ago|||
To be fair, farms average 1-2% profit margins at best, its not like they are making bank off you, it is barely enough for most farms to survive even if they got 1,000 acres.
akramachamarei 1 day ago|||
You don't foresee perverse incentives for the state being the buyer of healthcare? Namely, they aren't the patient, so the incentives have already been divorced is remote, plus they have an incentive to divert funds to consultants, regulators, and lobbyists that the actual consumer doesn't care about. There's some saying about how no one spends someone else's money as wisely as one's own.
boxed 22 hours ago||
States have huge incentives to keep the population healthy though. Sick days aren't a tax base.
snapetom 1 day ago||
Don't care. I'm going to name and shame. I worked at Seattle Children's Hospital in tech for a short time. The insane amount of self congratulatory back patting to mask incompetence and tolerance of mediocrity wasted billions that could have gone to patient care. What I witnessed there was damn near criminal.
FireBeyond 1 day ago|
Maybe they could run a fundraiser in Laurelhurst for some of that money. Anything to keep the residents distracted from spending money on business FlightAware subscriptions and fighting the DOH to try to get medical records to "show" that the three airlift helicopters a week that land at SCH are in violation of their community council noise ordinance because they weren't truly "life threatening emergencies" and thus should have landed at UW or Harborview and been ground ferried from there to Children's.

Apparently the only helicopter noise some residents like is the sound of their own, ferrying them to BFI so they can go to Aspen for the weekend.

micromacrofoot 1 day ago||
This feels like the result of consultancy more often than not

My own employer has been burnt by consultants essentially moving the deck chairs around to the tune of $800 an hour

I suspect if someone internally made the same suggestions they'd be shot down, but only because they didn't cost so much

wittjeff 1 day ago||
The existence of non-profits, and the possibility that they might be net-beneficial to society, is counter to the dominant religion of the day. Profit motive = good, other motive = bad. Welcome to UChicago.
throwaway00099 1 day ago|
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