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As the movement to reduce or eliminate fee-for-service payment in favor of value-based payment plods along, some in the industry are voicing doubts that it is ever going to happen [...]

When Alexander Oshmyansky, MD, PhD, pitched the idea of a not-for-profit drug company that would undercut drugmakers' excessively priced pharmaceuticals, he was soundly rejected by potential backers, attracting no outside [...]

Haven Health may have withered on the vine. Google Health may have been broken up. But a disruption of healthcare's business model still is likely coming, and the actions hospital [...]

For asymptomatic patients with follicular lymphoma, observation remains the standard of care. [1] Similarly, single-agent rituximab is reasonable for patients with low-burden symptomatic disease. [2] However, given that most patients [...]

If they didn't know it already, members of the hospital field's C-suites do now: Keeping health care data out of the hands of cybercriminals is harder than ever. Thanks to [...]

From computers that crunch data to human beings who listen, health care organizations are adopting a variety of population health management tools and techniques. Hospitals, payers and insurers are taking [...]

Mandated community health needs assessments--a less-talked-about provision of the Affordable Care Act--may turn out to have a big impact on the transformation of health care. The ACA requires nonprofit hospitals [...]

With many in the hospital field looking to Washington, D.C., for guidance as to how health care reform will unfold, they might want to start paying more attention to what's [...]

Like movies, restaurant reviews, shoe shopping and practically everything else American consumers are interested in these days, health information and health care itself are becoming instantly available anywhere a mobile [...]

Older managers and clinicians aren't leaving health care as quickly as expected, but eventually they will. What does that mean for the field? As much as they might want to, [...]

Before the advent of health care reform, the work overseen by a hospital chief financial officer was relatively consistent from year to year. Despite an overall reimbursement and clinical model [...]

Caring for chronically ill elderly patients represents one of the biggest challenges in health care, a challenge that's likely to intensify as the baby boom generation grows older and, inevitably, [...]

On Oct. 1, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care act will take a giant leap forward. Until now, its major focus has been setting plans for the future--creating pilot projects [...]

WINNER | BETH ISRAEL DEACONESS MEDICAL CENTER, BOSTON Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center was an early adopter of the Six Aims for Improvement and since then has made the Institute [...]

Abstract Currently, because field-ready approaches are not available, individual wood members used in light-frame construction are typically replaced when fire reduces the total dimension of a member by approximately 1/4 [...]

Baby boomers will need more and more health care as they age over the coming years. That's a challenge for the new models of care now being developed. The last [...]

About the series This is the third installment in Hospitals & Health Networks' yearlong series examining the many ways the nation's roughly 75 million baby boomers will affect the U.S. [...]

Improving patient engagement is on the short list of strategies for hospitals and health systems to improve quality and patient satisfaction. But for patients to become actively engaged, their physicians, [...]

Many institutional investors are considering revamping their risk management operations in response to the need to manage risk from their increasingly large derivatives portfolios. In response to large losses racked up by some derivatives investors, institutional investors such as pension plan sponsors are trying to develop new, more sophisticated risk management techniques that reflect the exigencies of the derivatives market. Risk management consulting firms are trying to develop innovative but affordable solutions for derivatives investors.

The Pensions & Investments Performance Evaluation Report, a report on the financial performance of investment management firms, is presented for activity up through the 1st qtr, 1996 ending Mar 31st. In addition to the 1st qtr, 1996 results, the report also includes data on the management firm's 1-year and 3-year returns and their assets as of Dec 1995. The investment companies' performance data includes data on the firms' individual mutual funds.

Several pension fund officials expressed their opinions about the risk involved in the use of derivatives. Some institutional investors said that smaller funds should avoid derivatives. If the strategy is not well understood, even large funds may suffer devastating losses from investments in derivatives. Also, leverage may exaggerate the danger from derivatives.

International equity funds, with annual returns over 33% in 1993, were the top performing mutual funds used by defined contribution plans. The top international fund, the Harbor International Fund, returned 45.42%. The top fixed-income fund, the Keystone B-4 fund, returned 26.22%. The Twentieth Century Ultra Fund was the top growth mutual fund from 1988 to 1993 with an annualized return of 28.03%.

Hospital officials should be aware of an unusual bacterial outbreak taking place in Wisconsin that has yet to be explained, and could pose a threat elsewhere. The outbreak of the [...]

As life expectancy and the number of geriatric patients continue to rise, the incidence of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) in the elderly will undoubtedly continue to increase as well. [...]

Byline: Paul Barr Executives at not-forprofit hospitals are getting more aggressive in pursuing potential deals and also becoming chummier with their for-profit counterparts in forming long-term ownership partnerships. In the [...]

Many reputable investment adviser firms are questioning the methods used by some of their competitors in making the asset swaps required by the South African Reserve Bank in order to handle accounts for pension funds, insurance companies and unit trusts. Although asset swaps, wherein institutions can invest a percentage of their assets abroad provided an equal amount is invested in South African securities, is both legal and ethical, some investment advisers have used the process solely to obtain a share of the $100 billion South African pension fund market.

The Pensions & Investments Performance Evaluation Report (PIPER), a report on the financial performance of investment management firms through the 1st qtr, 1996, reveals that equity managers tracked by the report had overall returns of 31% for the 1st qtr compared to a 32.1% return for the Standard & Poor 500. The PIPER report also reveals that separate accounts focusing on small-capitalization stocks had the best results, with some small-cap managers reporting returns of up to 73%.

Increases in interest rates hurt the performance of funds that invested in long-term bonds during 1994. The Pensions & Investments Performance Evaluation Report reports for long duration fixed-income investments a median loss of 6.7% for the year in spite of a gain of 1% in the 4th qtr. Statistics are provided for returns on various types of fixed-income investments for the quarter, the year, the last three years, five years and ten years. Also stated are the percentage returns earned by the top ten money managers in each category.

Figures from the Pensions & Investments Performance Evaluation Report show that, for the year ended Sep 30, 1994, managers of cash funds and short-term bond funds performed better than managers of longer-term bond funds. Nine of the ten best-performing managers were responsible for cash or short-term funds. Those managers generated returns that ranged from 3.5% to 7.2%.

Increased derivatives use by fixed-income portfolio managers has made it more difficult to analyze such portfolios' attributes and performance. Derivatives such as swaps, options and futures are difficult to measure using traditional fixed-income criteria, and standards for measuring derivative-laded fixed-income portfolios are not on the horizon.

SEI Capital Markets Research has recommended that its clients place up to 30% of their fixed-income assets in high-yield bonds. SEI research has shown that the high-yield sector's correlation to other asset sectors is low. Other consultants also recognize that investments in high-yield bonds can be beneficial. Some pension plan sponsors are unwilling or unable, however, to invest in such securities.

The poor performance of mortgage-backed securities in 1993 has made it difficult for fixed income fund managers to use benchmarks to evaluate fund performance. There is more disparity between benchmarks than in the past. For instance, Pensions & Investments' Performance Evaluation Report returned 10.3%, above the Lehman Brothers Aggregate Bond Index, but below the Lehman Brothers Government/Corporate Index.

Byline: Paul Barr For-profit hospital operators were able to take advantage of a receptive market for corporate borrowing in recent weeks, refinancing almost $5.5 billion in debt. The companies that [...]

Byline: Paul Barr The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled against the state in a lawsuit contesting the state Health Department practice of allowing infant blood samples to be used for research [...]

Byline: Paul Barr While retainer-based medical practices offering care known as concierge medicine have taken some heat over the years for charging big bucks to patients for improved access and [...]

Byline: Paul Barr Erin Asprec 39, CEO, Memorial Hermann Southeast Hospital, Houston Singing in a symphony chorus, caring for a young child and running a 268-bed hospital are all in [...]

Byline: Paul Barr Johns Hopkins Medicine is placing its skill, reputation and money behind a technology startup that seeks to allow hospitals and health systems to sell internally developed programs [...]

Byline: Paul Barr As Sister Mary Jean Ryan officially steps away from an operational role at SSM Health Care, she and her colleagues say the St. Louis-based system is ready [...]

Byline: Paul Barr The protracted fight in Washington over raising the country's debt ceiling and cutting its budget has shined a light on a poor federal reimbursement outlook for U.S. [...]

Byline: Paul Barr The backers of a new effort to reduce healthcare disparities in care are trying to provoke more action from healthcare providers. Their message is that disparities are [...]

Byline: Paul Barr With the industry increasingly focused on new care and payment models relying on value-based purchasing and accountable care organizations, a new report aims to make it easier [...]

Byline: Paul Barr Christus Health restructured its upper management, resulting in eight senior managers taking new roles, two leaving for consulting positions with the Irving, Texas-based system, and one leaving [...]

Byline: Paul Barr CMS officials are looking to crack down on what they consider to be double-dipping on the part of critical-access hospitals, but advocates for the largely rural hospitals [...]

Byline: Paul Barr The proliferation of big healthcare deals continued last week with news of a pending $3.2 billion private-equity buyout of Emergency Medical Services Corp. and Sanofi-Aventis' plans to [...]

Byline: Paul Barr Kindred Healthcare executives believe doing better in post-acute care means doing more, and they've struck a billion-dollar deal to make Kindred the company that does the most. [...]

Byline: Paul Barr The snowstorm that ripped through the Midwest last week created scheduling headaches for several hospitals in areas hit by the storm. But the implementation of disaster plans [...]