Texas Health Resources enhances self-scheduling with flexible options
Amid expected growth in demand from patients to schedule their own clinic visits, an Arlington, Texas-based health system learned that in practice some patients want more than just the ability to go online to choose a visit time, date and provider. Officials for Texas Health Resources (THR) found that out while implementing a new self-scheduling…
Regina Herzlinger: Why it is important to champion innovation in healthcare
Regina Herzlinger, Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, emphasizes the importance of education in promoting innovation in healthcare. She highlights the need for healthcare organizations to consider the six exogenous forces of innovation, including competition, financing, technology, accountability, public policy, and consumer ratings. She also stresses the need for healthcare organizations to have a portfolio of revenue and supply sources, and the potential for technology to improve healthcare technology. Additionally, Herzlinger argues that education is crucial for sustaining innovation, particularly in the areas of technology, cost control, and consumer involvement.
Commitment and path required in change management to create a sustainable impact
In 2021, Carilion Clinic, a $2 billion revenue, eight-hospital integrated health system in Roanoke, Va., was facing a problem familiar to many health systems around the country: stubbornly high average length of stay (ALOS) that was hurting Carilion’s efforts to serve its community. The pandemic had exacerbated operational challenges and mitigated the effectiveness of previous…
Jeff Goldsmith: “Hospital mergers kill”: A case study in reality distortion
Last summer, The Wall Street Journal published an article reporting on a study by academic economists at Yale and the University of Chicago that reviewed the impact of hospital mergers.a The study’s authors argued that hospital mergers triggered a wave of layoffs by employers in surrounding communities. That finding caught my interest, so I read…
As data show a spike in spending on hospital services, new report lays out savings options
Accelerating hospital-focused expenditures helped spur a 2023 increase in national health spending, according to newly released data. Spending on hospital services surged by 10.4% for the year, up from a 3.2% increase in 2022 and 3.4% for the three-year period spanning 2020-22. The 2023 increase was the biggest seen since a 10.8% jump in 1990.…
Hospital financial and revenue cycle benchmarks paint a complicated picture heading into the new year
The tail end of 2024 has brought promising news regarding hospital financial metrics, even as revenue cycle indicators suggest continuing strain. Margin data are showing moderate improvement, and one of the three credit-rating agencies has upgraded its 2025 sector outlook for not-for-profit (NFP) hospitals and health systems. Fitch Ratings announced this week it was revising…
The state of U.S. primary care: Daunting challenges, achievable solutions
Value-focused efforts to shore up primary care require bold initiatives that increasingly are being implemented but continue to encounter obstacles, according to insights from a recent conference. “We have answers in a kind of amazing array of [physician] practices all over the country that are generally doing an aligned thing,” said Asaf Bitton, MD, associate…
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Healthcare providers explore payer direct access to EHRs, but most are still awaiting the benefits
This roundtable brought together a number of healthcare industry leaders to discuss challenges and solutions for effectively sharing medical record data with payers. Roundtable participants also say they hope that offering insurers direct access to clinical information can potentially eliminate some of providers' administrative burden of constantly responding to records requests, but that is yet to come to fruition.
News Briefs: Hospital advocates say Medicare’s 2025 outpatient payment update should have been higher
Medicare payments to hospitals for outpatient services will rise by 2.9% in 2025, according to a final rule published Nov. 1. The update is derived from a 3.4% increase in the market basket and a reduction of 0.5 percentage points as required based on the economywide productivity adjustment. Any hospital that does not fulfill quality-reporting…