Category: “Training”

2014 marks an important transition: For many hospitals, penalties will be assessed in fiscal year 2015 for failing to meet federal meaningful-use criteria by the end of fiscal year 2014.

Next year, U.S. healthcare providers will be subject to Medicare penalties if they do not meet up to 26 measures for value-based purchasing. As physicians wait to see if their payments will be docked or boosted based on how they rank, health policy researchers are continuing to raise questions about how the program works.

"We often hear that doctors' fees are to blame for escalating healthcare costs," said Doug Ghertner, president and CEO of Change Healthcare, the market leader in consumer engagement and cost transparency. "In truth, it's the facilities that exhibit the most significant variance in costs – often varying by hundreds or even thousands of percentage points."

A recent report paints a strong picture of the medtech industry showing across the board job growth in 2013. Here is a slideshow of the 10 medtech companies that hired the most people last year.

Nearly a third of hospital executives expect clinical information technology to have the biggest impact on the quality of care and patient outcomes – ahead of financial performance, clinical operations and patient engagement. Healthcare decision makers expect cost reductions as high as 15%. “Despite this optimism about the benefits, only 19 percent of those surveyed said their organizations are already delivering results based on their information management capabilities. Nearly 28 percent said they are currently implementing the capabilities, while 23 percent are in the planning stages. About 8 percent said they do not have a plan.”

According to the Association of Healthcare Philanthropy, the average cost to raise $1 for nonprofit hospital fundraising departments is $0.35. So to generate $1 million from your fundraising operation, you need to invest $350,000. On the clinical side, with average hospital margins at 2 percent, generating $1 million from operations would require your institution to spend $980,000.

"It's clear that at a crucial time for the industry — which is faced with declining reimbursement, consumer-driven care, a shift toward value and meaningful use penalties — information technology has become more of a problem than a solution. " Please say it ain't so: IT vendors charging exhortation rates for support, service and upgrades? Once they got ya they really got ya. EHRs may even be harming patients. Chuck Lauer, former publisher of Modern Healthcare speaks out.

Figures never lie but liars know how to figure. That certainly holds true here. However based on studies like this the government's grasp on more tax revenue won't relent and the Medical Device Tax is here to stay.

"The most dangerous place to be these days is a stand-alone hospital," said Michael Dowling, president and chief executive officer of North Shore-LIJ Health System, which has 16 hospitals in the New York area—and is currently negotiating with two other Westchester facilities.