Workforce

As more and more employers are adjusting benefits plans to improve the health of their employees and reduce their healthcare costs, findings from the nonprofit Center for Health Value Innovation (CHVI) show that not only are employees not engaged, employers are spending money without paying attention to the results they are getting -- or aren't getting.

Registered nurses in western Massachusetts have staged a two-day picket of Baystate Health facilities over their frustration with a 12-month impasse in negotiating a new contract.

Healthcare organizations may not pay attention to a recruitment report geared to recruiters, but there are insights to be gleaned from the Association of Staff Physician Recruiters’ (ASPR) 2011 In-House Physician Recruitment Benchmarking Report. Most important? Focus on workforce planning.

Kaiser Permanente is suing the California Nurses Association saying it violated terms of the current contract when the union authorized a sympathy strike last September.

As policymakers and employers struggle with the rising costs of healthcare, there's a direct solution to cutting healthcare costs while not sacrificing quality of care says the Institute for Women's Policy Research: paid sick days.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has launched the Health Care Innovation Challenge, which will award $1 billion in grants in March to test inventive and compelling methods to deliver high quality medical care at lower costs to individuals enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.

Medical device manufacturer Stryker Corporation last week announced plans to cut its global workforce by approximately 5 percent. Other restructuring activities are also anticipated to reduce the company's annual pre-tax operating costs by over $100 million beginning in 2013.

The average compensation for leadership executives at healthcare systems increased 3 percent in 2011 and hospitals increased nursing employment by 1.8 according to new survey results released by Integrated Health Strategies.

Walmart - the nation's largest retailer and biggest private employer - now wants to dominate a growing part of the healthcare market, offering a range of medical services from basic prevention to management of chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease.

When Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va., implemented a new workforce management tool for its nursing units, the health system uncovered a hidden world of "haves" and "have-nots."