Business briefs
Highmark says incentive plan cut ER visits, admissions
Highmark officials said an 18month-old incentive payment plan for primary care physicians has resulted in an 11 percent drop in emergency room visits and a 16 percent decrease in hospital admissions last year, for an overall $260 million in avoided health care costs. The program, called “True Performance,” encourages primary care doctors to help patients better manage chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and asthma so they’re less likely to end up in the hospital.
Lee Enterprises to manage Berkshire Hathaway newspapers
Warren Buffett’s company has hired Lee Enterprises to manage the mostly smaller newspapers it has acquired since 2011 in 30 different markets. Lee said it expects to collect $50 million in fees from the five-year agreement that should help BH Media Group’s newspapers reduce costs.
U.S. home prices march upward as buyers fight over low supply
U.S. home prices rose in April from a year earlier, lifted by bidding wars in many cities where would-be buyers fought over a sparse supply of homes. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20city home price index moved up 6.6 percent from a year earlier, led by outsize gains in Seattle, Las Vegas and San Francisco. All three cities showed double-digit increases. Prices rose even as home sales fell and mortgage rates climbed.
Little-known Vietnamese airline buying $5.6B in Boeing planes
Aerospace giant Boeing has agreed to sell 20 Dreamliner commercial jets to Vietnamese startup airline Bamboo Airlines in a deal worth up to $5.6 billion, the companies announced Monday, just weeks after the airline struck a similar $3 billion deal with French competitor Airbus. The new airline is a project of FLC Group, a publicly traded resort developer in Vietnam.
U.S. consumers were a bit less optimistic in June
American consumers lost a bit of their optimism in June, but are still feeling good by historical standards. The Conference Board, a business research group, says its consumer confidence index slipped this month to 126.4, down from 128.8 in May. The index measures both consumers’ assessment of current economic conditions and expectations for the future. Their view of current conditions was almost unchanged from May; their outlook dimmed.