For three years running, hospital CEOs have ranked financial concerns at the top of the list of challenges facing U.S. hospitals, reports Modern Healthcare. According to the recently survey of CEOs by the American College of Healthcare Executives, 67% of chief executive officers listed finances as their biggest worry. A distant second was a lack of medical personnel, with 36% of respondents citing the shortage as a primary concern, followed by 35% who singled out care of the uninsured as a major problem. Of their financial concerns, CEOs named Medicaid payments as the most troublesome, followed by Medicare reimbursement, bad debt, revenue cycle management, and payments from managed-care and commercial payers. The survey also revealed that quality and patient safety are more top-of-mind issues for CEOs than they were in 2004.
