Budgeting

While reducing reliance on expensive inpatient care is a sensible goal for hospitals, the transition away from a bricks-and-mortar, fee-for-service model is creating tremendous pressures on chief financial officers.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services recent 10-year projection of national health expenditures includes retail spending on prescription drugs, but a more complete picture of pharma spending would include the nonretail segment.

Most hospitals fall well short of their cost reduction targets, in part because the ability of chief financial officers to meaningfully impact how operational and clinical leaders approach the issue is limited.

While a few states are moving toward more healthcare price transparency, none have gone as far as Massachusetts to make the information accessible to consumers. But the most frequent early users of the newly disclosed data are probably providers.

In its semiannual Economic Outlook survey, Premier, Inc., asked hospital supply chain, materials management and C-suite executives to reveal the trends impacting their supply chains over the next year. Here are the top five issues.

Savvy healthcare supply chain leaders must go beyond medical product pricing to achieve the next level of savings for their organizations. Here are 3 areas to consider if you are searching for additional savings.

A new report by the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association paints a grim picture of the daunting financial challenges facing hospitals and other healthcare organizations in that state.

Since the recession began, credit rating agencies have generally held a negative outlook on not-for-profit healthcare providers in the U.S. The Affordable Care Act has not helped.

In an era of mounting fiscal uncertainty marked by downward trending net revenue at hospitals, the need for cost reduction has never been greater. Yet, many cost reduction efforts fail due to a lack of understanding about "the how" of achieving real, measurable cost savings.

Hospitals and health systems try their best to anticipate and meet the demand for specific drugs. But drug shortages - whether due to outbreaks of specific illnesses or unanticipated supply bottlenecks - are a fact of life in the medical world.