Cost Effectiveness of Health Articles

Nursing and clinician staff have long faced pressures, exacerbated by the pandemic, that have caused many of them to experience burnout and some to leave the profession. Recognizing such concerns among its staff, including a desire for greater flexibility in scheduling and types of assignments, Trinity Health in Livonia, Michigan, developed an innovative in-house travel staffing approach that would address the concerns and promote increased nursing staff engagement with its health system, without which it could not deliver the highest possible quality of care.

Healthcare organizations that received Provider Relief Fund payments between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2020, have until Thursday, March 31 to report on their use of those funds.

Affording greater freedom to physicians to practice medicine by easing administrative strictures on them may be the best strategy for ultimately promoting cost effectiveness of health, says Martin Bluth. But physicians also should be well educated in the economics and business of healthcare.

The primary care physician’s office has a pivotal role to play in efforts of hospitals, payers and other healthcare stakeholders to transition healthcare payment to arrangements that reward providers for the value of the care they provide. However, to successfully execute a value-based primary care model, organizations should be mindful of the all-too-common pitfalls that they may encounter along the way.

CMS shouldn’t increase Medicare payments to hospitals for the upcoming year beyond the annual update that is based on current law, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission.

January financial data for hospitals show the continuing toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, while February labor numbers suggest an operational recovery that could further increase expenses.

Healthcare News of Note for healthcare finance professionals is a roundup of recent news articles: Issues with healthcare access contribute to an increased risk of death for rural residents, many workers struggle to pay for healthcare deductibles, and hospital and physician office markups on certain drugs escalate consumer costs.

In normal markets, demand for services at given prices drives supply. Healthcare reverses the equation so demand for services is driven by the supply of healthcare facilities and practitioners, says hfm columnist David Johnson. In this second column in his series examining structural defects of the U.S. healthcare system, Johnson challenges these “artificial economics” and describes how cutting-edge health systems will apply new, more customer-focused economics to become the future market leaders.

Listen to the podcast. Design thinking: A human-centric approach to problem solving in healthcare Design thinking is a process that’s gotten a lot of attention over the last few years, and it’s proving a useful tool in healthcare. On a recent episode of the Voices in Healthcare Finance podcast, Jess Roberts, who leads the Culture…

Jess Roberts from the University of Minnesota discusses how the iterative process of design thinking can help healthcare organizations solve problems. Also in this episode, Michael Bumann of sponsor Red Dot discusses how his clients have taken the millions of dollars they've gained through using Red Dot's motor vehicle accident account platform to accomplish organizational goals.