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Hospitals' struggle for financial sustainability continues and may be getting worse, as CFOs say information technology investments draw more resources than expected and threaten to crowd out other priorities.

Hospitals and health systems want to mitigate their compliance spend as much as possible, as well as reduce the odds of facing large penalties for being out of compliance. The path to lowering the costs of compliance starts with putting appropriate policies and procedures in place -- and getting the right people at the table to make that happen.

Already big and still growing, the U.S. healthcare system in 2015 will be scrutinized inside and out for signs of financial problems, the federal government's health investigator promises.

It's the rare hospital that has never experienced delays in receiving reimbursement as a result of clinical documentation coding snafus. But hospitals that don't make a serious stab at clinical documentation improvement (CDI) will be poised to take an even harder hit come October 2015, the start date for ICD-10 implementation.

Change has become routine for healthcare finance executives, as healthcare moves toward value and accountability. And this publication is not immune.

Looking out at the transition to retail insurance and inward to its own efforts to develop consumer-focused services and technology, Aetna is investing in its own private benefits exchange. 

The Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington, Maine, opened a new chapter in its almost 100-year history last month, when it became part of MaineHealth, the state's largest health system. Revenue declines forced the hospital to seek a strategic partner, the organization's CFO acknowledged.

California's public health department has failed to adequately manage investigations of nursing homes statewide, resulting in a backlog of more than 11,000 complaints -- many involving serious safety risks to patients, according to an audit released last week.

All HIPAA-covered health organizations, and especially insurers, have been handed a small victory in the war of administrative simplification, as federal regulators once again back off a policy change long in the making.

A number of hospitals are getting into the surgery center business as inpatient surgery cases continue to decline. For hospital CFOs contemplating a surgery center acquisition, there are a number of considerations to take into account.