After many years of postponing cuts mandated by the sustainable growth (SGR) rate formula, Congress finally repealed it last week within hours of a 21 percent fee cut for physicians. The SGR was intended to control Medicare costs by holding physician payments closer to U.S. economic growth. It was part of the Balanced Budget Act […]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed a 1.3 percent increase in payments to hospitals under the inpatient prospective payment system (IPPS) for 2015. However, it projects a decrease in overall payments of about $241 million, primarily because of payment reductions for readmissions and hospital acquired conditions (HAC). Provisions related to readmissions […]
The blog this week is from John Harris, DGA Partners. As health providers adapt to health reform and an increasingly competitive marketplace, strategic responses are starting to come into focus. Some say there will be one successful model, but we are seeing diverse strategies, and the threat of disruption from niche players. Health […]
You may have heard this: “culture eats strategy for lunch.” It’s a popular phrase in business, and popular on Internet business and video sites as well. But culture remains difficult to define, especially when applied to groups or teams within an organization. We can say, loosely, that culture is “the way we do things around […]
Whatever the market and financial conditions of your hospital, the quickly evolving healthcare environment dictates a robust assessment of its future direction, including strategic collaborations. AHLA and HFMA recently noted in a jointly sponsored webinar on mergers & acquisitions that “Healthcare reform and other macro economic factors are pushing more providers to integrate both vertically […]