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For healthcare finance professionals, healthcare inflation requires intensified efforts to address five concerns: increased bad debt, increased operating costs, heightened public scrutiny of pricing policies and executive compensation, increased competition by privately funded competitors offering low-cost solutions and growth of “Occupy Healthcare” movements.

Managing observation status requires a focused and consistent effort. Inappropriate assignment of observation status is expensive for patients and hospitals alike and can impede the goal of providing patients with the right care at the right time in the right setting.

U.S. health systems’ rely on centralized, high-cost platforms (e.g., hospitals) to deliver routine care in an approach focused on optimizing revenues under fee-for-service payment. Yet this approach is inefficient and asset-heavy. To build less brittle, more consumer-centric delivery platforms, health systems must decant procedures to more convenient, lower-cost locations as they pursue full-risk contracting.

West Health-Gallup recently found only 5% of consumers believe that Americans are receiving high-value healthcare. Joe Fifer says addressing this challenge will require a new mindset and an expanded mission, but he believes healthcare leaders are up to it.

Tammie Jackson believes the healthcare industry’s current workforce challenges are opportunities to redefine workplaces to better attract and retain employees.

Clinical care only accounts for 20% of health outcomes, yet this area is where America disproportionately invests its healthcare resources. To overcome U.S. healthcare’s services-need mismatch, there should be a greater investment in healthy multipliers that help to address the social and economic factors, health behaviors and the physical environment that drive the remaining 80% of health outcomes.

HFMA President and CEO Joe Fifer offers perspectives on the revenue cycle workforce shortage.

The first quarter of 2022 saw a confluence of trends emerging from the pandemic, some good and some bad for hospitals, making it important for hospitals to take time now to review where they are and what actions they should take to address these trends.

As healthcare finance professionals in traditional health settings focus on managing their organizations’ capital commitments and evaluating direct investments in private equity funds to enhance non-operating income, they should monitor two megatrends, involving “Big private equity” and special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs).

The workforce shortage, the behavioral health movement and value-based care are areas with the most momentum among early-stage investors.