Hospital/physician relations

Unless hospitals and other health care facilities begin cooperatively fighting the country's most aggressive bacterial-resistant germs, infection rates could increase as much as 10 percent over the next five years, hitting about 340,000 people annually, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released this week.

Disruptive behavior is not new, but the unprecedented publicity over Cecil the Lion's death is a reminder that the reputation of a physician, nurse, administrator or an executive can become a liability overnight.

Financial pressures are causing a growing number of U.S. doctors to leave private practice for hospital employment, according to a new report by Accenture.

As the programs turn 50, Medicare and Medicaid's long role in funding medical education is finding itself stretched thin by looming nursing and physician shortages.

As patients, consumers, governments and the media are all following the money in healthcare, more scrutiny than ever is falling on executive compensation, especially for nonprofit systems and health insurers.

Using social media, web technologies and data analytics, healthcare marketing professionals can engage current patients, future patients, and the broader community in ways like never before.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Wednesday proposed a new rule that would reimburse doctors for end-of-life counseling, the very kind of practice that led to the heated “death panel” debate before the Affordable Care Act was passed.

Yale created a process that linked financial and clinical data, giving physicians access to information they didn't have before.

The best method to attract and keep consumers is to build access to points of care throughout the organization, from a hospital's retail clinic to physician offices, primary care and medical specialists, experts at HFMA 2015 ANI say.

News comes as more healthcare providers lean on these staff members.