Cover Story
How to future-proof your travel nurse and clinician staffing
In fiscal year 2021, an innovative in-house travel staffing approach saved Trinity Health $32.1 million, and it has saved another $33.9 million in the first two quarters of the fiscal year 2022. Trinity’s experience offers an important lesson for other health systems on how to address ongoing clinician staffing challenges that were exacerbated by the pandemic.
Features
How an internal travel pool for nurses is helping one health system address the staffing challenges that will linger after the pandemic
Novant Health has been ahead of the curve as health systems set up internal travel pools in the hope of attaining a greater level of nurse staffing certainty.
5 ways the ERM playbook for health systems is due for a rewrite
Business risk for health systems has continued to evolve amid huge changes affecting the industry, including those driven by COVID-19. Health system leaders should respond by revisiting their approach to enterprise risk management (ERM) to focus on five areas of risk where their ability to deliver healthcare cost effectively could be compromised: Labor shortages, capital planning amid ongoing change, energy consumption, cyber security and price transparency.
Spectrum Health leaders create diversity council for CFO-led functions
The new program helps boost CFO division diversity by 4 percentage points in a year and a half.
Columns
Reframe workforce challenges as opportunities
Tammie Jackson believes the healthcare industry’s current workforce challenges are opportunities to redefine workplaces to better attract and retain employees.
Paul Keckley: PE investing trends healthcare finance leaders need to watch
As healthcare finance professionals in traditional health settings focus on managing their organizations’ capital commitments and evaluating direct investments in private equity funds to enhance non-operating income, they should monitor two megatrends, involving “Big private equity” and special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs).
Jill Geisler: Empathetic leadership: What it is and why it’s important for healthcare finance leaders
Jill Geisler explains empathetic leadership and its importance for healthcare leaders. She shares ways to cultivate empathy and highlights its potential downside. DEI efforts within organizations can result in extra work for key staff.
David Johnson: Cracks in the Foundation (Part 3): Overcoming healthcare’s services-need mismatch
Clinical care only accounts for 20% of health outcomes, yet this area is where America disproportionately invests its healthcare resources. To overcome U.S. healthcare’s services-need mismatch, there should be a greater investment in healthy multipliers that help to address the social and economic factors, health behaviors and the physical environment that drive the remaining 80% of health outcomes.
Gail Wilensky: Labor issues dominate hospitals’ concerns for early 2022
The first quarter of 2022 saw a confluence of trends emerging from the pandemic, some good and some bad for hospitals, making it important for hospitals to take time now to review where they are and what actions they should take to address these trends.
Joe Fifer: Revenue cycle workforce shortages: Culture is key
HFMA President and CEO Joe Fifer offers perspectives on the revenue cycle workforce shortage.
Departments
Chapter's essential spreadsheet skills training goes regional
HFMA’s Hudson Valley Chapter has been providing members with Excel training for more than 20 years. The program was so popular, it’s now offered regionwide.
Angie Swearingen named COO at St. Mary’s Medical Center
Angie Swearingen was promoted to COO at St. Mary’s Medical Center. Richard Chesnos is retiring as CFO of St. Clair Health, and Eric Luttringer will succeed him.lthcare billing practices
News Briefs: Federal funding bill addresses hospitals' 340B eligibility concerns, extends health waivers
A monthly roundup of top news for healthcare finance professionals.
Supplements
Optimizing the revenue cycle by streamlining and automating payment collections
This roundtable features leaders’ insight to help entities evolve in today’s workforce to meet challenges such as regulations and digital adoption.
Providing healthcare organizations with the right data to understand cost and margins
To address the healthcare industry’s challenges in waste, cost of care and inefficient data usage, one company discusses its support system to assist in decision support and for understanding cost and margins.
Providers implement automation and explore staffing options to streamline revenue cycle
In this roundtable, finance leaders discuss tactics they’ve used to implement automated tools and extend their workforce to reduce waste in their revenue cycle processes, aiming to improve patient experience and control costs.
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