ViewPoints Blog

The Chartis Center for Rural Health (CCRH) team is proud to partner with the National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health (NOSORH) to celebrate National Rural Health Day on November 17th.  As part of this celebration of rural health, we’ve teamed up with iVantage Health Analytics to recognize top performance in quality, outcomes, patient perspectives and financial stability.

I’m often asked to identify the single biggest factor that derails performance benchmarking initiatives. The list of potential culprits can be quite extensive

Over the course of my career, I have had an opportunity to speak with a lot of leadership teams at hospitals and health systems about their efforts to continuously drive and inspire performance improvements. I’ve probed, had great conversations and gathered their thoughts about what it takes to ensure meaningful success.

When the Affordable Care Act was created conventional wisdom suggested that one of the by-products reducing the ranks of the uninsured would be a simultaneous drop in Emergency Room volume.

"Being a nurse is physically and mentally challenging. Though serving those in need comes with rewards. It is important to understand the toll it takes on a nurse as a human and try to mitigate those issues to keep nurses at the bedside."

Over the course of the last several months, we’ve been hearing rumbling from within the payor community that participation in the state exchanges created as part of the ACA may not be a long-term proposition. Last week those rumbles turned into shockwaves when news broke that UnitedHealthcare – the nation’s largest insurer – would exit exchanges in all but a handful of states in 2017.

In an era of increased competition and declining reimbursements, we’re seeing hospitals across the nation reassess their service areas as part of a broader effort to uncover new growth opportunities. But when you talk with execs, planners and marketers about how they get from Point A to Point B in that process, you realize just how ‘static’ certain aspects of the strategic planning function remain.

Market volatility will likely continue in 2016, and this further highlights the importance of measuring opportunity and risk across financial classes, payors, and service lines. For hospital executives, this knowledge is essential to preserving net patient revenue and identifying strategic growth opportunities.