John Andrews
Putting together a budget has never been at the top of any executive’s “fun list,” but today’s dire economic climate makes the process more strenuous than ever.
The weakness of the U.S. economy is giving rise to an issue that hospital executives may not have paid much attention to before – qualifying indigent patients for Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security Disability.
Take heed, hospital administrators - Uncle Sam is watching. Because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is getting pickier about what it pays for in the acute care setting, the agency is looking inside the hospital to find claim denials.
Recessions have a way of forcing everyone to rethink their expenditures and the prudence of each purchase. While hospitals historically haven’t had to do that with regularity, they definitely are doing it now and they are calling on group purchasing organizations and vendors to help them.
They say necessity is the mother of invention. If true, one could make the argument that if a stalled credit market is necessity, then leasing and used equipment purchasing is the invention.
Healthcare financing appears to be a big waiting game in early 2009.
PERHAPS IT ISN’T just politics that make strange bedfellows. Like it or not, the healthcare industry is becoming more competitive and commercial as consumer-driven forces cause executives to re-evaluate their organizations’ status in the marketplace. And it is resulting in some interesting partnerships not previously seen.
NOW THAT HEALTHCARE is beset with the same troubles as the rest of the economy, it’s official: No place is insulated from the Wall Street collapse.“Even though hospitals’ fi...
BECAUSE HEALTHCARE “customers” don’t fit the conventional role of goods and services buyers, provider organizations haven’t made customer relationship management a priority....
WHEN IT COMES to hospital-physician relations, both parties should concentrate on their similarities rather than their differences, industry experts say. By focusing on the goals and challenges they s...