Hospital financials projected to continue trending upward despite various X-factors
Hospitals are coming off a year of improved stability that should continue even with looming questions and challenges for 2025, according to recent data and insights. As reported in December, Fitch Ratings upgraded the sector outlook (login required) for not-for-profit (NFP) hospitals to neutral/stable after more than two years in which the outlook was categorized…
Healthcare’s Data Challenges: 4 Steps to Unlock Lasting Clinical Improvement
Download this white paper to discover how you can navigate the healthcare data ecosystem, elevate patient care, streamline resources and improve financial outcomes.
Healthcare Finance Trends for 2025
CommerceHealthcare® presents Healthcare Finance Trends for 2025, the bank’s annual assessment of influential forces driving the current leadership agenda.
Texas Health Resources enhances self-scheduling with flexible options
Amid expected growth in demand from patients to schedule their own clinic visits, an Arlington, Texas-based health system learned that in practice some patients want more than just the ability to go online to choose a visit time, date and provider. Officials for Texas Health Resources (THR) found that out while implementing a new self-scheduling…
Regina Herzlinger: Why it is important to champion innovation in healthcare
Regina Herzlinger, Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, emphasizes the importance of education in promoting innovation in healthcare. She highlights the need for healthcare organizations to consider the six exogenous forces of innovation, including competition, financing, technology, accountability, public policy, and consumer ratings. She also stresses the need for healthcare organizations to have a portfolio of revenue and supply sources, and the potential for technology to improve healthcare technology. Additionally, Herzlinger argues that education is crucial for sustaining innovation, particularly in the areas of technology, cost control, and consumer involvement.
Commitment and path required in change management to create a sustainable impact
In 2021, Carilion Clinic, a $2 billion revenue, eight-hospital integrated health system in Roanoke, Va., was facing a problem familiar to many health systems around the country: stubbornly high average length of stay (ALOS) that was hurting Carilion’s efforts to serve its community. The pandemic had exacerbated operational challenges and mitigated the effectiveness of previous…
Jeff Goldsmith: “Hospital mergers kill”: A case study in reality distortion
Last summer, The Wall Street Journal published an article reporting on a study by academic economists at Yale and the University of Chicago that reviewed the impact of hospital mergers.a The study’s authors argued that hospital mergers triggered a wave of layoffs by employers in surrounding communities. That finding caught my interest, so I read…
As data show a spike in spending on hospital services, new report lays out savings options
Accelerating hospital-focused expenditures helped spur a 2023 increase in national health spending, according to newly released data. Spending on hospital services surged by 10.4% for the year, up from a 3.2% increase in 2022 and 3.4% for the three-year period spanning 2020-22. The 2023 increase was the biggest seen since a 10.8% jump in 1990.…
Hospital financial and revenue cycle benchmarks paint a complicated picture heading into the new year
The tail end of 2024 has brought promising news regarding hospital financial metrics, even as revenue cycle indicators suggest continuing strain. Margin data are showing moderate improvement, and one of the three credit-rating agencies has upgraded its 2025 sector outlook for not-for-profit (NFP) hospitals and health systems. Fitch Ratings announced this week it was revising…
The state of U.S. primary care: Daunting challenges, achievable solutions
Value-focused efforts to shore up primary care require bold initiatives that increasingly are being implemented but continue to encounter obstacles, according to insights from a recent conference. “We have answers in a kind of amazing array of [physician] practices all over the country that are generally doing an aligned thing,” said Asaf Bitton, MD, associate…