On a consolidated basis across Columbia and Jefferson City, MU Health Care is $20 million ahead of what was budgeted in Missouri fiscal year 2025.
This period of positive financial performance falls between July 2024 and February 2025, just missing MU Health Care’s announcement that it would end participation in Anthem’s Medicare Advantage plans — the first phase of the insurance fallout.
Greg Damron, MU Health Care’s chief financial officer, gave a financial update Thursday at the UM System Board of Curators’ Health Affairs Committee meeting. No comment was made on the failed health insurance contract with Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield that has left nearly 100,000 patients out of network.
“We’re yielding about 50% of margin for every new dollar revenue we’re bringing in, which is good,” Damron said. “I’ll just go ahead and say we had a good March as well. We got a margin of $6 million in March against a budget of two.”
AI-powered communication
The University of Missouri System representatives boasted a variety of other achievements in health care at the meeting.
Richard Barohn, executive vice chancellor for Health Affairs, said new AI-powered communication tools are being test-driven across MU Health Care clinics. The two tools, Nuance DAX Copilot and Oracle Clinical Digital Assistant, are “ambient listening devices” that listen to provider-patient discussions and automatically generates clinical notes.
“This is really the beginning of the AI tools, as we incorporate them into our medical workforce,” Barohn said. “We’re exploring and testing additional ways for physicians, nurses and other members of the workforce to use AI to improve their efficiency, well-being and the whole patient experience.”
MU Health Care also kicked off a nationwide study of pregnant women with heart diseases to determine how care influences the outcome of the mother and child. MU Health Care will receive a $8.3 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute for the study, in collaboration with University of Missouri-Kansas City and St. Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute.
Barohn said MU Health Care was the first of 36 institutions nationwide to enroll participants in the study, which will track 1,000 pregnant women with heart disease over four years.
