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Nearly 47 percent of California voters over the age of 40 surveyed say a close family member will need long-term care within the next five years, and about as many say they couldn't afford even one month of nursing home costs, according to a poll by the SCAN Foundation and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

How do you go from a traditional business model to one that is based on volume? That's a question being asked a lot these days in the healthcare industry and one that was addressed during the Maine chapter of the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s annual meeting last week in Rockport, Maine.

National health spending in July grew 4.2 percent relative to July 2011, up from the 3.9 percent growth rate experienced in June, according to the Health Sector Economic Indicators brief released recently by the Altarum Institute’s Center for Sustainable Health Spending.

Fifteen years in the making, Aurora Health Care recently signed on two of Wisconsin’s largest health plans – Aetna and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield – to its new Aurora Accountable Care Network, which offers a price guarantee to employers and promises average savings of 10 percent based on past claims expenses.

In 2009, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBS) launched the Alternative Quality Contract (AQC), a global payment reimbursement pilot program that rewards participating physician groups for controlling spending and improving quality of care. A Commonwealth Fund-sponsored analysis of the first two years of the five-year pilot has found that such programs may be effective at controlling healthcare spending and improving quality.

On the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Go Direct campaign website is a countdown clock. It isn’t counting down to the end of the Mayan calendar. And although some older adults may view the clock as ticking down to the end of the world as they know it, the Treasury Department and leaders of the long-term care industry say the deadline it’s counting down to will begin a new era of increased efficiency and cost savings.

While most healthcare organizations are anxious to see what changes to the system healthcare reform will bring, executives at urban and safety-net hospitals are most concerned about the looming Medicare and Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) payment cuts and the challenges these cuts will bring.

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Rick Langfelder at Lutheran Medical Center, a 462-bed hospital located in Brooklyn, N.Y., spoke recently with Healthcare Finance News Associate Editor Kelsey Brimmer regarding the most pressing financial issues that many hospitals located in urban areas of the U.S. have been facing over the last few years and what is to come for them.

During a White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) conversation in July, leaders in healthcare and policy discussed the Healthier Hospitals Initiative (HHI) to reduce the environmental footprint of hospitals, lower costs and improve overall patient health by way of including sustainability efforts and initiatives into their business models.

Marie Freire, PhD President The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health Bethesda, Md.