Health Care Finance One of the things people should know is that the landscape for health care is not good at present, especially in the not-for-profit sector. We are definitely running a not-for-profit health care institution here at VGH. Consider the Moody's Outlook for 2012, which is currently negative. There are a number of challenges that institutions like ours face, and will be explained in this article. Hospital revenue growth for the

Some hospitals create a "contingency" budget, which can be offset by a few of these patients. The percentage of non-paying patients can vary a good deal, particularly in a city- or county-owned hospital. This number may not vary, and typically in a budget the hospital CEO and/or CFO negotiates with the governmental bodies for regular subsidies to cover. The billing cycles can be difficult to predict, particularly for Medicare and Medicaid

This is also an individually focused discipline, which relates to the development of critical thinking skills. The third and fourth disciplines are interpersonal, collective paradigms. The Shared Vision discipline refers to a commitment within a group or organizational setting, in which a mutual purpose is developed. Team Learning focuses on group interaction, with high importance placed upon communication techniques through which collective thinking and learning are transformed. The final

What emerges from these efforts are two essential understandings. First, in spite of whatever evidence may exist to the contrary, system building will continue apace in the hospital industry. Whether the battlefield is risky is immaterial, for the battle is joined. Some individual hospitals may decide to remain solo or stay in modest-sized systems where problems are more manageable, at least until some future time when some of the cloud

Healthcare Environment The last few decades have seen the healthcare environment change from one that was dictated by physicians to one that is dictated more by big business and government entities. That is particularly problematic, because that puts healthcare into the hands of people who are not really focused on helping people, and are, instead, focused on the financial aspects of ensuring that people get care. While healthcare should be about

Merger and Acquisition Mergers and Acquisitions Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is an aspect of business strategy dealing with the amalgamation of two or more companies of similar entities or buying, selling or dividing different companies. Despite several common features of M&A, there is still a distinction between the two concepts. Merger is the amalgamation of two businesses of equal or nearly equal sizes; however, acquisition is the takeover of entire business of