Patty Enrado

As U.S. hospitals continue to cut staff during the recession, healthcare executives and administrators are striving to remove inefficiencies across all of their operations.

The New England Healthcare Institute's recently released report, "Remaking Primary Care: From Crisis to Opportunity," highlights the issues surrounding the primary care physician shortage and offers recommendations to alleviate the problem.

An estimated 100 protesters gathered for a short morning rally against the health insurance industry at the AHIP Institute 2009 conference Thursday at the San Diego Convention Center.

With state Medicaid program cutbacks and reduced Medicare reimbursement rates looming, hospitals are looking to control costs in labor management.

In the last four months, an increasing number of academic institutions have closed clinical laboratory sciences programs as a result of state budget cuts and the economic downturn.

The Institute of Medicine's March symposium on health reform for older patients recommended that healthcare professionals be trained to meet the needs of this growing segment of the population.

In the last two years, Onondaga County’s investigation of as many as 30 referrals to its consumer-directed home health services program uncovered fraud and abuse.

Taxing employer-provided health benefits, a proposal endorsed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) but opposed by President Barack Obama during the presidential campaign last fall, has surfaced as a way to pay for healthcare reform.

Payers at the Fourth National Pay for Performance Summit in March shared the results of their P4P programs, reporting some areas of success while noting the programs are still evolving.

Before 2008, Southwest General Health Center was exceeding its budget for total labor costs. The private, not-for-profit 354-bed facility implemented Kronos' workforce management and labor analytics tools by the end of 2007 and achieved $10 million annual labor cost savings for 2008.