Strategic Planning

At a time when emergency care is increasingly viewed as inconvenient, overcrowded and overpriced, and possibly losing ground to urgent care clinics, some health systems are trying to make their ERs a place where people actually want to go and spend their time and money.

Catholic Health Initiatives, one of the nation's largest health systems, is keeping its eye on the future by launching a new health brand that will compete with established health insurers.

If we can identify the "underlying path" of health spending, we can do a better job of predicting the future from a noisy history. This underlying path can also serve as the curve to be monitored for evidence of any "bend."

Financial models involve a whole series of assumptions about such elements as volume, payer mix and salaries. While a health system may have historical data to work from, putting together projections for a new line of business is more difficult.

If we don't fundamentally change the way we pay for healthcare, we won't change the economic principles that continue to drive the rapid growth in healthcare spending. Let's pay physicians and hospitals based on the health problems their patients have.

The Affordable Care Act included a number of delivery system reforms, such as ACOs, bundled payments, and workforce provisions to strengthen foundations in primary care. Unfortunately, a focused effort on payments for specialists was not included.

To boost patient satisfaction scores and compete with urgent care centers and walk-in clinics, hospitals are allowing patients to book appointments in the ER.

In an effort to survive and thrive in the transition to value-based payment models, New Jersey's Hackensack University Medical Center launched an experiment, which, so far, looks promising.

Many small, rural hospitals have struggled financially in recent years. But one critical access facility in Nebraska has discovered a means to financial stability and beyond.

Healthcare finance professionals must better understand how value is delivered by frontline providers, and simultaneously offer providers business insight, said an expert on nursing management today at the HFMA ANI 2014 conference.