Accounting & Financial Management

Today's pharmacy departments have millions of dollars of drug products in inventory, plus several professional level staff members, including pharmacists, technicians, buyers and analysts.

Oversight of the health insurance exchanges and the shift to value-based payments are the leading management challenges facing the Department of Health and Human Services in the coming year and the most concerning to the HHS Office of Inspector General.

In an effort to raise awareness of hospital price variation, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and Anthem Blue Cross started a “reference pricing” initiative in 2011. It appears to be having an impact.

Fee-for-service methodologies, especially relative-value units (RVUs), keep creeping back into alternative payment models like capitation. Maybe we should take the hint and adapt RVUs to the new environment rather than throwing them out the window.

Hanging above physicians like the mythical sword of Damocles, the sustainable growth rate (SGR) provision threatens to impose a 24.4 percent decrease to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule on Jan. 1, 2014.

Reference pricing is a great cost-saving idea and I'd like to see more of it. But it’s a pretty poor argument for the superiority of the free market in healthcare.

As the healthcare industry transforms, consolidation, mergers and acquisitions and creative partnerships continue.

Community Health Systems reported a sharp drop in earnings for the third quarter and lowered its full-year earnings outlook on the challenging environment for healthcare providers and sliding patient volume.

The Affordable Care Act cuts Medicare price growth. But if hospitals respond by increasing the amount of care provided, the potential cost savings from price restraint may be lost.

Overall U.S. healthcare prices remained relatively unchanged from August to September 2013, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.