Healthcare Strategic Management articles from October 2003

Healthcare Strategic Management archives from October 2003

Market memo: Orthopedic advances require revised provider stategies.(Orthopedic Services)
October 1, 2003... Orthopedics programs will be critical to hospitals' service line strategy in the years ahead given that demand is growing, orthopedics drives considerable ancillary volume and because physicians are increasingly interested in developing...

Tenet healthcare faces tough turnaround.
October 1, 2003... Tenet Healthcare's new CEO and its reorganized board have a very sick company in their intensive care unit. The leaders of the nation's second-largest hospital chain, which also is the fastest shrinking, are trying to turn their...

VHA report indicates need for closer integration of health care work force, IT issues.(Strategic Notes)
October 1, 2003... VHA report indicates need for closer integration of health care work force, IT issues As hospital administrators and planners are all too aware, two of the greatest challenges facing health care organizations are attracting enough skilled...

Two health care consulting firms merge.(Strategic Notes)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Two health care consulting firms, The Strategy Group and The Strategy Development Group (SDG) Inc., have merged. The new firm, which will keep The Strategy Group name, will be headquartered in Norfolk, Va., with satellite offices in Los...

Tenet continues to reshape portfolio of properties.(Strategic Notes)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Tenet Healthcare Corp. of Santa Barbara, Calif., continues to whittle down its portfolio of properties as it seeks to stabilize operations and restore investor confidence. The company has said it will sell four of its hospitals in Arkansas...

St. Louis provider plans $70 million heart hospital.(Strategic Notes)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... St. John's Mercy Hospital in the St. Louis suburb of Creve Coeur, Mo., is expected to begin construction on a $70 million heart hospital beginning in March 2004. The 286,000-square-foot facility, St. John's Mercy Heart Hospital, will be an...

Report forecasts positive outlook for children's hospitals for next two to five years.(Statistical Notes)
October 1, 2003... Prospects are good in the next two to five years for the nation's 250 major children's health care providers as pediatric-centered programs are providing a growing proportion of hospital services for the nearly 80 million U.S. children age 18...

Report: hospitals reporting quality data show lower mortality rates than nonparticipating ones.(Statistical Notes)
October 1, 2003... A second report on how well California hospitals perform coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery shows that hospitals that participated in the state's voluntary reporting program have lower mortality rates than hospitals that chose not to...

Report finds "quality gaps" in delivering care cause 57,000 avoidable deaths annually.(Statistical Notes)
October 1, 2003... "Quality gaps" in delivering health care lead to more than 57,000 avoidable deaths in the U.S. annually, according to a recent report from the Washington, D.C.-based National Committee for Quality Assurance. The annual "State of Health...

Obese, overweight Americans living in denial about risks for Type 2 diabetes, survey shows.(Statistical Notes)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Overweight Americans do not believe they are at serious risk for Type 2 diabetes, according to a recent survey from the American Diabetes Association. Even though more than half of overweight or obese respondents knew that being...

Survey: higher out-of-pocket costs will cause consumers to go without health care.(Statistical Notes)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... While about one-third of Americans think increased out-of-pocket costs will influence people to make better decisions about the health care they need, nearly twice that amount (64%) believe it will cause people to go without health care...

Report: Medicaid spending growth slows for first time in seven years as states struggle .(Statistical Notes)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... With most states coping with their fourth year of fiscal stress, all 50 states and the District of Columbia have planned or implemented Medicaid cost containment actions for fiscal year 2004, according to a recent report from the Kaiser...

Decision Resources launches comprehensive HMO financial database, includes interactive features.(Database Notes)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Decision Resources' InterStudy group recently launched a new national HMO financial database. The database features per-member-per-month costs and premiums; inpatient and ambulatory utilization data by line of business; financial...

Grants awarded for interactive technologies used to improve health behavior, disease management.(Database Notes)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has awarded $4.8 million in grants to 18 sites in order to help realize the full potential of the emerging field of eHealth - the use of interactive technologies to improve health behavior and disease...

New web site debuts to meet Georgia's need for more health care workers.(Database Notes)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Georgia Healthworks, a new online health care job board, has debuted to meet the needs of Georgia's health care employers and job candidates searching for careers in health care. The site can be found at www.gahealthworks.com. In addition...

Anthem Bue Cross expands web site to Spanish speakers, adds online Spanish provider directory.(Database Notes)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield has expanded MiSalud@Anthem, its Spanish-language health and wellness site, and added Directorio de Proveedores, an online provider directory in Spanish. Anthem's Spanish language portal is accessible through...

Supply-savings initiative bucks local traditions at rural Nebraska hospital.(Worth Reading)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Regional West Medical Center, Scottsbluff, Neb., has cut its supply costs by about $750,000 so far, and annual savings are projected at $800,000, reports the October issue of Hospital Materials Management. The secret for the 187-bed rural...

Employee satisfaction is key to success for Alegent health.(Worth Reading)
October 1, 2003... Alegent Health, Omaha, Neb., has discovered the importance of employee relations as an influence on customer satisfaction. The nine-hospital system has executed an employee communication program that works top-down, bottom-up and in every other...

Fairview Hospital in Cleveland moves ahead on its baby image.(Worth Reading)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Fairview Hospital, Cleveland, is playing on its existing strength to market a growing range of specialty services. Known as 'the baby hospital' throughout its 100-plus history, it's using a 20-foot-tall baby on billboards with the tagline,...

Report shows quality of health care varies dramatically by state.(Health Care Quality)
October 1, 2003... The quality of care at the nation's hospitals varies substantially from state to state, according to the sixth annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study. Results of the study, which rates each of the nation's nearly 5,000 hospitals...

Providers, public wake up to the value of sleep centers.(Sleep Centers)
October 1, 2003... An estimated 60 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders, 40 million of them chronically, creating a seemingly made-to-order market for hospital-affiliated sleep centers. Still, operating a successful sleep center requires more work than...

Sleep medicine an evolving discipline.(Sleep Centers)
October 1, 2003... Sleep medicine has evolved from a core of basic scientific knowledge obtained since the 1950s. However, it has only been in the past 20 years or so that clinical methods have become reliable enough to accurately diagnosis conditions and that...