HIPAA. All systems go.
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Confidentiality↗
Biomedical subjects
Richard Haugh
Publications and source records attributed to Richard Haugh.
Motor city blues.
With its safety net hospital in peril, Detroit had a choice: fundamentally reform its public health system or watch it collapse. Cities nationwide face a similar dilemma.
Financial Management, Hospital↗
Legislation & regulation. The benefits of transparency.
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Disclosure↗
Getting the attention of Big Pharma. And Big Pharma is listening.
Hospitals with social-service missions use their clout as shareholders to pressure drug companies to change policies on issues ranging from pricing to environmental concerns.
Consumer Advocacy↗
Finances. Vexing volumes.
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Capital Financing↗
Telemetry takes off.
After a slow start, payers are signing on to the telemedicine trend, as rural hospital and major medical centers come to see the benefits of cooperation.
Hospital Shared Services↗
Finance. A surge in bad debt.
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Deductibles and Coinsurance↗
Reinventing the VA. Civilian providers find valuable lessons in a once-maligned health care system.
Once maligned for its health care system, the Veterans Administration in recent years has improved the quality of the care it offers, creating a sophisticated electronic medical record and streamlining business processes, such as bed use and prescription drug procurement. Civilian hospitals should take note.
Appointments and Schedules↗
Pressures converge in the ICU. Hospitals turn to IT and process changes to improve outcomes and satisfaction.
The ICU is where all the pressures of a hospital show themselves in high relief. Quality, work processes and staffing are more challenging here. This Clinical Management article examines how hospitals are reducing mortality rates, increasing patient and staff satisfaction, and bringing efficiencies to the ICU through high- and low-tech solutions.
Critical Care↗
Finance. Patience required.
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Cost Savings↗
Prescription for concern.
As U.S. medical care relies more heavily on prescription drugs, hospitals are caught in an increasingly painful situation. Shortages of critical pharmaceuticals often leave hospitals empty-handed and, according to clinicians, endanger patient safety. Soaring drug costs account for a huge proportion of burgeoning health care spending, and strategies to control costs, including pharmacy benefit managers and drug discount cards for seniors, so far have had limited or negligible success. Direct-to-consumer advertising has increased demand for expensive--and according to some experts, unnecessary or inappropriate--prescription drugs. In this special report H&HN examines the pressures that these factors put on hospitals.
Advertising↗
A multitude of strains add up to one big headache. Feeling the pressure?
A multitude of strains--most beyond the control of health care executives--are converging to create major headaches for hospitals and systems. Skyrocketing insurance premiums, surging drug spending, Medicaid cuts, a staffing crisis and huge hikes in liability insurance rates contribute to the unprecedented confluence of pressures. And there's more.
Drug Costs↗
Point and click. (If only it were that easy.).
Along with tight reimbursement and confounding regulations, any list of big headaches for health care leaders includes information technology. We've been promised so much from IT for so long, and have been disappointed so many times, who can blame us for being skeptical, if not downright cynical? When is the last time an investment in information technology actually improved your bottom line? But we know we can't dismiss IT altogether. At the end of the rainbow there really is efficiency, security and better care for patients. So how close are we? In this issue, H&HN takes a hard look at technology--what it can do for us today and tomorrow. We look at return on investment, examining whether hospitals are measuring what they get back against what they put in; a budding effort to bring a common platform to health care IT; handheld computers; electronic medical records; and computerized physician order entry. The technology is out there, but it's fair to ask: is it really clicking yet?
Computer Communication Networks↗
Dr. Discontent.
Physicians are angry, that that's bad news for hospitals. Increasingly, doctors are unable to pay soaring liability insurance premiuyms, are refusing to accept new Medicaid and Medicare patients, and are balking at taking ED calls. What's more, many physicians are setting up niche facilities that compete directly with hospitals in the most lucrative service lines.
Attitude of Health Personnel↗
Nowhere else to turn. As the ax falls on mental health funding, hospital EDs fill the gap--reluctantly.
As the ax falls on mental health funding, state mental hospitals are closing and investor-owned psychiatric organizations are filing for bankruptcy or shifting their focus to more lucrative general acute care services. That leaves patients--many of them uninsured--with nowhere to seek help except hospital emergency departments.
Emergency Service, Hospital↗
Hospitals feeling 'niched to death'.
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Economic Competition↗
. . . By a thread--a fragile, fraying safety net is everybody's problem.
With rising health insurance premiums, surging numbers of uninsured people, tighter state budgets and federal threats to cut back on Medicaid and other funding, the nation's already fragile safety net is unraveling. If you think that's a problem for public hospitals alone, think again. When the safety net frays, every hospital feels the pressure.
Bankruptcy↗
NFP Investor Conference. Growth is back in sight.
In a whirlwind of high-stakes meetings in New York City in mid-May, two dozen of the nation's largest hospitals and health systems strutted their stuff with a single goal: securing their future. Their message was clear: back-to-basics works, and now it's time to grow the business. Executives from 23 providers outlined their work on increasing revenue, boosting margins and shoring up balance sheets. They presented their market positions, strategic initiatives and financial results for investment analysts, credit raters and bond traders. The third annual Non-Profit Healthcare Investor Conference was co-sponsored by the American Hospital Association, Health Forum, the Healthcare Financial Management Association and Salomon Smith Barney. The focus on growth doesn't come without challenges Several common themes emerged from the presentations, among them pressure on reimbursement, workforce shortages, liability insurance issues and capacity constraints. Yet executives agree: it all comes down to the basics, and building the strength to keep their missions alive. As Thomas Meier, vice president and treasurer of Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente, put it: "No margin, no mission, no más."
Capital Financing↗