Workforce
A survey of practicing nurses found that they currently feel secure about their jobs but pressures due to the rough economy have impacted their retirement plans.
How does the CEO of a best performing hospital, according to Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals, manage priorities?
In the July/August issue of Healthcare Finance News there was an article titled ‘Physicians Fleeing Private Practice.’ To add insult to injury, there are two more reasons why this trend is likely to continue or even accelerate: Governmental audits and breaches of protected health information (PHI).
Audits and PHI are on the rise in physician practices and groups, threatening revenue streams at levels never seen before due to fines and penalties. These problems have seen considerable attention by the press and the market but, for the most part, related primarily to the hospital setting.
When it comes to compliance violations, service lines with the most repeat visits are also the most likely to be “repeat offenders.” Yet most of these specialties – including behavioral healthcare and rehab – have little political clout within the hospital and are seldom on the CFO’s radar.
That’s about to change.
There has been an excess of depressing economic news in the United States this summer.
We’ve witnessed the absurdity of the Congressional “debate” over raising the debt ceiling, which led Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the U.S. sovereign credit rating. A jittery stock market combined with weaker than expected job gains have left many economists speculating that the United States may be headed back into recession.
With numerous studies pointing out the high rate of medical errors (and the resulting law suits) due to miscommunications among medical staff, in addition to increasing consumerism in the healthcare sector and reimbursement models tied to patient satisfaction, the importance of having doctors who have solid communication skills has come sharply into focus.
The number of physician assistants practicing in the United States reached 83,466 in 2010, a 100 percent increase over the last 10 years.
While the U.S. economy experienced practically no job growth in August, the healthcare sector continued to buck the national trend, as the industry added 29,700 positions.
The Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday awarded $40 million in grants to public health departments across the country to help them strengthen their infrastructure, performance and efficiency and to create new jobs.
In a 3-to-1 decision, the National Labor Relations Board overruled a decision made 20 years ago that set the standard for determining how bargaining units were formed at non-acute care facilities. Opponents have warned that if the NLRB changed the way units are determined at non-acute care facilities like nursing homes, costs will increase and quality of care may suffer.