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For many hospitals and healthcare systems around the country, making the decision to outsource a particular department within a facility can be both more cost effective and efficient, however, isn't always a go-to solution for healthcare leaders.

Andrew Bazemore, MD Director, The Robert Graham Center Washington, D.C.

Competition for the best physicians is fierce: hospitals and health systems want them, ambulatory surgery centers want them, physician groups want them. Gone are the days when hospitals could just assume they would be a natural fit for any physician coming into their area. Hospitals must now be proactive in recruiting physicians, and these efforts should involve the C-suite or the hospital risks losing providers to other settings.

Okay then - we have an ICD-10 implementation date: Oct. 1, 2014. It has taken 19 years for the industry to get this close to what is actually a fairly modest goal - upgrade a classification system used extensively in healthcare for reimbursement transactions, quality initiatives, epidemiological tracking and clinical research from the thirty-year-old ICD-9-CM to the latest completed version, ICD-10-CM/PCS.

One of the comments I hear often from healthcare financial executives is that they are continuously being pushed to "do more with less." I hear this in relation to workforce management, revenue cycle process improvements, changing reimbursement models, automation efforts and IT projects.

In a Sept. 7 panel discussion at Vanderbilt University hosted by the Association of Management Consulting Firms (AMCF), industry leaders concurred that the journey from fee-for-service to value-based medicine will not be for the faint of heart.

Maine is often regarded as being behind the rest of the country in a lot of things, but last August, it found itself experiencing a growing healthcare business trend dubbed "Big Med."

A newly released report by the National Health Foundation (NHF) documents the successes of a private hospitals program to safely discharge homeless patients and save money for the participating hospitals.

While much attention has been paid to the role state health insurance exchanges will play in health reform, a second, quieter movement also created under the Affordable Care Act has been taking place and one that could play as significant a role in the states as the exchanges themselves - the formation of new, non-profit health insurers called Consumer Oriented and Operated Plans (CO-OPs).

Results of a new national survey conducted by Medicare Today and KRC Research shows that 9 in 10 seniors are satisfied with Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage, up from 78 percent satisfaction when the program was first launched.