A 77-bed hospital in Indiana fell victim to a ransomware attack on April 4 via an ordinary looking email sent to a clinical worker’s Outlook inbox. The worker opened the email and inadvertently released the malware. Recognizing something was wrong, the worker notified the IT department which immediately shut down all of the hospital’s computer […]
Continuing our series on excerpts of interviews with iProtean experts, we feature our old friend and new iProtean expert, Jim Rice, Ph.D., FACHE., on governing in an era of population health. We’re moving into an era of population health management that will have profound implications, both challenges and opportunities, for boards of directors. I […]
Note: iProtean will be at its annual symposium next week. The newsletter/blog will resume the following week. More recruitment for physician employees occurred in urban than rural and suburban areas in 2015. Compared to all placements in 2015, nearly 37 percent were recruited in urban areas compared to 25 percent in 2013, according to […]
Four-fifths of executives at healthcare and payer organizations said in a 2015 KPMG survey that their IT has been compromised by cyber-attacks. Malware was the top information security concern of the 223 healthcare executives surveyed. The recent cyber-attack on a California hospital highlighted ongoing malware dangers for hospitals and the need to plan accordingly, […]
Cyber risk figures into the credit rating for many companies and organizations, said Moody’s Investors Service analysts in a recent cross sector global report. Assessing cyber preparedness for credit rating purposes “is challenging because the risk is complex and evolving very quickly.” Moody’s considers the risk of a widespread, material cyber event similar to how […]
Note: the editorial staff at iProtean will be taking a holiday break beginning next week and will return the first week in January. Happy Holidays! The not-for-profit healthcare sector will be “stable” in 2016, according to the Moody’s Investor Service 2016 Outlook, released early this month. Moody’s analysts attribute stability to operating cash flow […]
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) issued preliminary estimates for hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) for 2014, noting a 17 percent decline since 2010. This translates to a cumulative total of 2.1 million fewer HACs for hospital patients from 2011 through 2014. AHRQ estimated that nearly 87,000 fewer patients died in the hospital as […]
Board members overseeing risk management and compliance can now view the chief healthcare regulatory agency’s 2016 Work Plan, a blueprint of projected investigations over the coming year. The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued its work plan in early November and noted that it “will expand its focus […]
Both policy makers and providers expected a movement of patients from inpatient to outpatient settings due to payment redesign and other cost-cutting initiatives in the years since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. However, both inpatient and outpatient utilization fell among pre-Medicare-age enrollees in employer-sponsored plans in 2014, according to a new report […]
Local governments want not-for-profit hospitals to provide financial support to help them meet their rapidly increasing fixed costs. Reluctant to increase tax rates, municipalities want not-for-profit hospitals to make payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) or, in some cases, to pay property taxes, according to a recent Sector-in-Depth report from Moody’s Investors Service. The […]