Strategic Planning
The Virginia Mason Institute, part of the Virginia Mason Health System, will be working with five hospitals within England's National Health Service Trust Development Authority.
The insurer's rise, fall and later rebound poses a cautionary tale in today's consolidating healthcare market. And some of the strategies behind Aetna's $37 billion takeover of Humana invoke themes from the failed 1990s-era HMO empire.
The economic collapse in 2008 changed everything for the new CFO Amy Floria, plunging Goshen, both the city and hospital, into crisis. But smart cost management has helped the system bounce back.
There's a crisis in rural health, and while the future for these smaller, remote hospitals may seem bleak, experts see a major change in the model to keep these providers afloat.
One fear is there will be added pressure to increase direct federal subsidies for additional exchange customers, possibly creating a new kind of entitlement program.
As the healthcare industry moves from volume to value, tech vendors including Cerner, Craneware, Premier Revenue Solutions LLC and ZirMed Inc. are attempting to fill the need in the market by working with hospitals to integrate their revenue, clinical and operational systems.
Hospital systems and other nonprofit healthcare institutions could soon find themselves losing long-held tax exemptions, as another major health system, New Jersey's Atlantic Health System, has lost its legal fight to avoid paying property taxes.
Individual marketplace plans are in for huge rate increases next year, some fear, but the ACA markets so far suggest that many organizations, including provider-owned plans, are holding the line, according to researchers with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Urban Institute.
With Aetna's market share set to balloon next year after its takeover of Humana wraps up, the insurer is trying to assuage health systems that might fear greater reimbursement pressure.
According to tax and advisory firm KPMG, 74 percent of healthcare providers say they are either in the beginning stages or have not even begun to invest is systems for analytics and financial reporting.