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In the post-ACA era, aligning physicians with organizational goals appears to be gaining traction in health systems and hospitals nationwide. Based on a February survey of the HealthLeaders Media Council, comprising executives from healthcare provider organizations across the country, physician alignment remains a complex challenge. Even as value-based care continues to take effect, clinical integration or alignment is quickly emerging from a need to ensure quality, cut costs, and drive referrals across health systems and hospitals. Directly employing physicians has been one of the main strategies healthcare leaders are using to improve physician alignment with health systems. Download this free report today, and learn about the results of aligning the goals of physicians and organizations.

Although quality-reporting programs such as meaningful use provide incentives to help providers implement and use electronic health records (EHRs) to collect and report on clinical data, practices often need help deciding what data to collect, which measures to report on, and how to best use their EHRs to do so. This white paper provides you with the basic information you need to choose appropriate CQMs for your practice, and offers tips on how to use your EHR to store the data in a structured format.

Physicians and advanced practice providers are crucial to every performance, quality, safety, care utilization and patient satisfaction goals. These factors significantly affect an organization's financial viability, which is why providers' compensation must be aligned with them.

Frost & Sullivan’s award was bestowed on GE’s Centricity Financial Risk Manager which enables healthcare systems to reduce the cost of administering risk-based contracts, thus improving profitability and maximizing efficient workflows.

The Cejka Search Healthcare Perspectives survey identifies top healthcare delivery priorities for physicians and administrators, providing insight on attracting, engaging and retaining high-performing healthcare leadership teams in today’s market.

All phases of an EHR migration require planning and an understanding of what data is needed to provide a complete EHR that supports clinical adoption, patient care, safety and satisfaction. This white paper examines the strategic considerations and challenges encountered when migrating data to a new system.

Learn more about the cost and quality of Patient-Centered Medical Homes (PCMHs) and how studies between 2012 and 2013 show that there are improvements in costs, utilizations and overall health due to the initiation of PCMHs. Download the entire white paper to learn more.

What's the right population health management approach for your organization? In this white paper, you'll get a working definition of population health and learn why it's more important now than ever before. Plus, you'll gain insight into the 12 criteria that every health system should consider when evaluating population health management companies for success today and into the future.

All healthcare delivery organizations will need to transform themselves in order to meet the quality, safety and cost challenges confronting healthcare. In this free ebook, Healthcare: a Better Way, you'll discover a strategic framework and a practical roadmap for developing a healthcare analytics approach for sustaining quality improvement. Download to learn more about navigating the challenges confronting healthcare today.

Providers face an onslaught of daily practice management challenges. In this MGMA Body of Knowledge (BOK) brochure, uncover relevant and practical essentials to improve any medical practice. Explore areas such as operations and financial management, governance, patient care and adverse legal events. The MGMA Body of Knowledge helps you easily define improvement areas within your medical practice. It also assists all employees in building a sustainable business plan and optimizing daily operations for better performance.

How can you prepare for regulatory reimbursement changes? Scenario planning is proving essential to cope with value-based reimbursement, shrinking networks and the Affordable Care Act. Strategize and plan for success by downloading this checklist.

The shift to value-based care is one of the most significant financial, cultural and technological challenges ever faced by the U.S. healthcare system—and it will affect every stakeholder in the system. Healthcare providers can no longer focus solely on process-oriented measures and instead need metrics that gauge progress to deliver high-value care. This healthcare executive report provides three steps hospital executives can take now as they transition from volume to value and break down silos to create the infrastructure, processes and workflows required to succeed.

Healthcare providers should complete payer testing soon and use testing insights to focus ICD10 preparation efforts.

With technology on their side, patients now demand more transparency than every before, while payors want bank for their buck, proving that providers can no longer work alone.

Boards have a duty to see that hospitals and health systems comply with all state and federal laws and regulations, but they generally delegate responsibility for establishing, managing, and monitoring compliance programs to management. They also have a fiduciary responsibility to see that charitable assets are used appropriately.

Rolling Plains Memorial Hospital achieved a substantial $438,000 reimbursement improvement in just 3 months by taking advantage of TruBridge’s Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) Training. Rolling Plains Memorial Hospital is an 85 bed community hospital located in Sweetwater, TX with annual revenue of $42 million. As the executives at this facility noticed a discrepancy in patients’ charts and the level of care the patients received, they knew something needed to change. TruBridge was able to make a dramatic difference in clinical documentation and capture the earned reimbursements.

While the challenges of implementing ICD-10 are well documented, the impact to the revenue cycle is not as well known. Revenue cycle leaders must model their payor contracts now to mitigate the risks that ICD-10 will bring.

The ripple effect of healthcare reform is beginning to impact care delivery strategies as care management now falls increasingly to providers. According to a recent HealthLeaders Intelligence survey, hospital leaders are making progress with care management efforts, but more robust tools will be needed if hospitals want to scale up. The October 2014 survey polled 134 senior, clinical, operations, finance, marketing, and information leaders across the healthcare spectrum. The majority of respondents were from nonprofit organizations (63%), while the remainder (37%) came from for-profit settings.

Creating a successful patient experience strategy is a long-term investment in planning, surveying, training, and technology. Healthcare organizations hope these efforts will pay off at the very least with a growing base of loyal patients, better care quality, and stable reimbursement. And then there are those organizations that are turning patient experience into a movement. What’s their endgame? They intend to build state-of-the-art service-oriented cultures that rival other industries, and they are doing it through data analytics, unique communication programs, radical cultural shifts, and consumer-centric technologies. Sponsored material.

Innovative technologies, provable ROI, and the need to create value fast—all are leading hospitals to make deeper forays into telemedicine.

From Ebola preparedness to leading large-scale changes, today’s master’s degree programs are producing leaders eager to tackle this generation’s most pressing challenges. Rahul Anand, MD, is chief epidemiologist at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, Connecticut, where he heads up all infectious disease prevention activities for the nonprofit integrated delivery network, from Ebola preparedness to hand washing. He’s also adjunct assistant professor in the department of medicine at the University of Utah, where he worked full time prior to moving to the East Coast. On top of that, he is one-third of the way through an MBA program at the University of Massachusetts Isenberg School of Management. It will take him another two years to finish the online program. Sponsored material.

The 20 leaders gathered at the 2015 HealthLeaders Media Revenue Cycle Exchange in Austin, TX, tackled the challenges of clinical documentation, which they identified as the biggest threat to their organizations' revenue cycle efforts.

As healthcare organizations become more adept at collaboration, data mining, and understanding the unique populations they serve, they are designing innovative care programs that involve higher risks and rewards.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the nation’s largest payer, has set a clear direction with its publication of targets: By 2018, 50% of fee-for-service payments will be through alternative payment models, such as ACOs and bundled payments, and 90% of FFS payments will be tied to quality or value. And CMS has begun to introduce mandatory bundles. This suggests that all providers will need to develop population health competencies, including the ability to manage risk for both cost and quality.

Alan Manning has an intimate view of what it takes to provide an outstanding patient experience, not only because he has been COO of Derby, Connecticut–based Planetree for four years, but also because he spent several months in the hospital with his critically ill daughter. That pivotal experience, while traumatic, solidified friendships with his daughter’s nurses and brought him several years later to Planetree, a nonprofit organization started in 1978 by a patient who wanted to help hospitals deliver stronger patient-centered care practices. Planetree works with 700 organizations in more than 17 countries.