Supply Chain

During a White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) conversation on July 24, leaders in healthcare and policy discussed the Healthier Hospitals Initiative (HHI) to reduce the environmental footprint of hospitals, lower costs and improve overall patient health by including sustainability efforts and initiatives into their business models.

Based on venture capital funding levels, deal totals and merger and acquisition activity, global consulting firm Mercom Capital Group reports that the healthcare IT sector is experiencing its highest levels of economic bustle since 2010.

With the financial pressures that healthcare organizations are facing, many hospitals are using traditional cost cutting methods to save money by looking at layoffs and staff reductions. Many more hospitals, however, are finding ways to reduce costs through lean management methods that don't require layoffs and can improve quality for patients.

The cardiac medical device market is projected to reach a compound annual growth rate of an estimated 9 percent by 2015 in the U.S., according to a recent report from research and consultancy firm RNCOS.

As widespread drought annihilates crops and sends prices increasingly higher, supply chain managers at healthcare facilities are no doubt eyeing their budgets.

Global competition and the impending medical device tax, set to begin Jan. 1, 2013, are creating challenges for the U.S. biomedical device industry, according to a new study by tax advisory firm WTP Advisors.

A man accused of rigging hospital contract bids, defrauding the Internal Revenue Service and filing false tax returns pled guilty last week in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a proposed rule that most medical devices distributed in the United States carry a unique device identifier (UDI).

Large pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has agreed to pay $3 billion in order to resolve charges of engaging in illegal schemes related to unlawful marketing and pricing of some of the drugs it manufactures in what has become the largest healthcare fraud scheme in the country's history.

As part of the ACA, the Supreme Court upheld a new tax provision intended to help fund healthcare reform -- a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical device sales beginning Jan. 1, 2013.