Robert Fromberg
Editor in Chief, HFMA
The hfm magazine 2007 editorial calendar is all but finalized. The calendar, which lists topics the magazine plans to cover during the year, has obvious use for writers and advertisers. (Let the flood of calls begin!) In addition, it's a window into the issues that HFMA, based on our research and insights, believes are most important to healthcare finance professionals (or in some cases should be important but have not quite bubbled up yet on our interest surveys).
Speaking of sneak previews, before I get to the calendar, allow me a little shameless promotion. In a few days, the first issue of our new publication for small and rural hospitals, Big Business for Not-So-Big Hospitals, will hit the mail with articles on where small hospitals should invest their resources and regulatory issues that will affect small hospitals, among others. I hope you'll click on the link, take a look, and subscribe. And another new publication, Consumer-Directed Health Care, just mailed last week, with articles such as tools of the CDHC trade, supply costs and price transparency, and who's who in CDHC.
On to the calendar. As always, I welcome your thoughts.
January: Leadership
Planned topics include evaluating your leadership skills, motivating and inspiring employees, developing talent and new leaders, and leadership actions related to consumerism and price transparency.
February: Technology
Planned topics include making the most of the revenue cycle technology you have, assessing your information technology needs, financing information technology (especially electronic health records), and technology for managing health savings accounts and other aspects of consumer-directed health care.
March: The Uninsured and Underinsured
Planned topics include the latest state and federal activity to regulate community benefit, charity care, and collection practices; new regulations requiring proof of citizenship for Medicare payment; and examples of financial practices related to uninsured and underinsured patients from leading organizations.
April: Cost Management
Planned topics include collaboration between administration and physicians to control supply costs, collaboration between administration and physicians to improve clinical care processes, service line management, and controlling labor costs, including how to address long-term nursing shortage, structure employee benefit programs, and address unionization.
May: Business Development
Service line structure in light of DRGs being rebased to reflect severity, how to collect and use market intelligence, physician recruitment and payment, merger and acquisitions: trends, due diligence, and how to exit from a business arrangement.
June: Enterprise Risk
Planned topics include C-suite risks such as those related to conflict of interest and executive compensation, antitrust and antikickback issues, and quality and price transparency.
July: Benchmarking and Performance Improvement
Planned topics include key performance indicators for the revenue cycle (how to identify and use them), what finance professionals need to know about quality measurement, and hot to identify and use measures of organizational financial performance.
August: Financial Reporting
Planned topics include why and how not-for-profits are adopting Sarbanes-Oxley provisions, reporting charity care, effect of revisions to IRS 990 and other IRS issues, and cash flow management.
September: Revenue Cycle
Planned topics include innovative approaches to front-end revenue cycle improvement, point-of-service collections, and revenue capture, as well as special revenue cycle issues for small and rural hospitals.
October: Consumerism
Planned topics include innovations in price/quality transparency, commercial payment trends (including consumer-directed health plans), strategies for simplified pricing, how to help patients understand and use health services, how to improve financial staff’s consumer service skills, and how hospitals are structuring benefits for their employees.
November: Strategic Planning
Planned topics include key findings and strategies from HFMA’s environmental outlook, strategies for facility planning, essentials of competitive strategy, strategies for IT planning, and the role of finance in strategic planning.
December: Medicare/Medicaid
Planned topics include new Medicare payment rules, examples of states’ efforts to restructure Medicaid, and other significant changes to Medicare and Medicaid; the view of the capital markets regarding hospitals’ ability to cope with Medicare; and a forecast for what Medicare changes may need to occur in 5-10 years.
