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You might expect a 25-bed critical access hospital in Michigan's remote Upper Peninsula to face a bit of a challenge when searching for a new CEO. And you might expect [...]

Quality has evolved from buzzword to strategic objective in recent years as not-for-profit hospitals have sought urgently needed improvements in the caliber of care and patient safety. Now, while the [...]

With no end in sight for the nation's nursing shortage, hospitals are placing greater emphasis on retaining their current RN staff. It's a complex process, requiring in-depth knowledge of the [...]

Million-dollar malpractice settlements. Rising labor costs. Slumping bond ratings. These are certainly trying times for hospital executives struggling to keep their institutions in the black. Yet many hospital executives, having [...]

Days after assuming the CEO mantle at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in January 2002, Michael Dowling told his 30,000 employees that they were LIJ's greatest assets. What Dowling [...]

THE BUSINESS CASE Health care organizations have stepped up efforts to improve patient safety and quality in response to the Institute of Medicine's report that up to 98,000 patients die [...]

Sign-on bonuses, free cars, concierge services--desperate hospitals are trying every trick in the book to attract nurses. That might be part of the problem; tricks can produce short-term recruiting results, [...]

Saint Joseph Health Center, Kansas City, Mo., periodically puts its Level II trauma center on bypass status because it has too few specialists to cover it. The University of Virginia [...]

* What should hospitals outsource? What's driving outsourcing? Hospitals are financially stressed; many struggle with operating margins of plus or minus 1 percent. The merger activity in the latter half [...]

Jim Knutson knows the value that Aircraft Gear Corp. receives for its health care dollars is often difficult to pin down. "We are seeing cases where we pay a lot [...]

When Legacy Salmon Creek Hospital opened last year in Clark County, Wash., the areas obstetricians found themselves in a bind. The hospital was built to serve a rapidly growing region [...]

The problems associated with nurse and pharmacist shortages are becoming an old and sad story. Now you can add a new chapter: The lack of medical coders has risen to [...]

At Saint Louis University Hospital, CEO Crystal Haynes regularly walks the floors to talk with nurses and other employees about their jobs. At North Shore--Long Island Jewish Health System, chief [...]

Living in denial can be a useful approach to life every now and then. For example, I like to think that duct tape is a perfectly fine substitute for basic [...]

Frustrated with managed care and flush with wise investments, physicians are retiring earlier--alarming hospitals and practices. Things look grim for Gil Rodriguez, M.D., vice president of medical affairs at Southwest [...]

If your hospital departments are top-heavy with doctors 55 and older, here's some advice from recruiters who've been there: First, perform a population needs assessment to show demand for a [...]

The well-documented pharmacist shortage is alarming, but one hospital has found a way to retain good pharmacists without breaking the bank. Mission St. Joseph's Hospital, a 628-bed hospital in Asheville, [...]

* The shortage of registered nurses is growing nationally. Two recent reports underline the extent of the problem in specific states. A survey by MHA, an Association of Maryland Hospitals [...]

JOE HAWKINS CEO, Merritt, Hawkins & Associates, Irving, Texas Tell her. If later she feels betrayed, she will leave the area, sue the hospital, or both. Informing her will take [...]

Your suburban hospital is losing business to competitors because your community needs another primary care doctor. You are trying to help a solo practitioner in town attract a partner. The [...]

Consider these audacious goals: Eliminate all preventable harm and score among the top 2 percent of hospitals on standard measures of patient satisfaction by 2012. That's what drives performance improvement [...]

OUR MISSION The AHA Quality Center is a resource of the American Hospital Association designed to help hospitals accelerate their quality improvement processes to achieve better outcomes for improve organizational [...]

Tired of losing money on employed physicians, some hospitals are converting their medical groups to federally qualified health centers. Not only does the move cut losses, it can also improve [...]

Only 21 percent of freestanding hospitals participating in a recent study report that leadership succession planning is routinely done in their organization. Approximately one in six indicated that as part [...]

In the dog-eat-dog world of staff recruiting, four hospitals in the Columbus, Ohio, area have decided to muzzle their competitive nature. With financial and organizational help from the Osteopathic Heritage [...]

In 2000, Mount Carmel Health Systems was struggling with a human resources crisis. Workers were unhappy and leaving their jobs. Overall staff turnover at the central Ohio health system was [...]

One way of combating the staffing shortage in health care is to assist entry-level employees in climbing the career ladder. More than 62 hospitals are striving to do just that [...]

If a big California health care buyer has its way, hospital systems around the country could find their backs against the wall when bargaining with insurers. A bill sponsored by [...]

Pamela Ott doesn't want to, but she's likely to break the law in order to treat sick patients. She's not alone. Like many of her peers, the CEO of the [...]

Hospitals can lower their supply costs by inserting themselves between their physicians and suppliers, suggests a new report from VHA Inc., Irving, Texas. But that task is far from easy [...]

Patient health isn't the only thing important to Lowell (Mass.) General Hospital. The 200-bed facility initiated its "Spring Into Action" program in the spring, with the goal of making its [...]

Lost in the clamor over the shortage of nurses, pharmacists and technicians is another shortage nearly as crucial--qualified medical coders. Experts say it costs hospitals big dollars. "It's not unusual [...]

Hospital emergency departments, with patient visits increasing, face a new problem that cuts to the heart of their operation: too few on-call specialists. An emergency department in Davis, Calif., has [...]

A rookie nurse working the night shift, gets a medication order she cant read, and calls the physician at home--at 2 a.m.--for clarification. Irritated at being awakened for a minor [...]

NOW HIRING Hospitals expect to step up their recruitment of clinicians from now until late spring, according to a survey by AMN Healthcare. How do you expect recruitment of clinical [...]

Your CFO and CNO have just told you they are getting married. The CFO, John, has offered to quit. They've both been good performers and you hate to lose either [...]

Six Sigma, Lean Thinking, Crew Resource Management--hospitals increasingly rely on these and other quality improvement tools to shape their operations. Integrating them can be a Herculean task. The Nebraska Medical [...]

To accommodate the limits on resident hours instituted three years ago by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, California's Olive View-UCLA Medical Center hired four nurse practitioners to help [...]

With doctor and nurse shortages in the United States, hospitals are increasingly looking abroad resolve staffing needs. Currently, 22 percent of physicians and 12 percent of nurses are foreign born, [...]

The relationship between hospital leadership and physicians is likely the most complex and most important in the organization. What's more, it serves as the foundation for the physicians' relationships with [...]

In a tight labor market, hospital leaders are always on the lookout for ways to build loyalty and create enthusiasm among their staff. In Minnesota, one hospital lets nurses play [...]

A growing number of radiologists around the country are getting a better night's rest That's making it easier for some hospitals to recruit and retain them. When patients at hospitals [...]

* Vacancy rates for pharmacists at U.S. hospitals and health systems continues a four-year decline, dropping to 5 percent in 2004 from 8.9 percent in 2000, the American Society of [...]

* Competition for health care workers is getting more intense in South Florida with the opening of Memorial Hospital Miramar. The hospital needs to fill more than 600 positions, including [...]

A cardiologist on your staff, Dr. Stone, is advertising his services. The ad copy claims that he's the most experienced, most respected" physician in the city. He does some procedures [...]

Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago launched an aggressive recruitment campaign to fill 80 staff nurse positions in key units, including ICUs and ambulatory surgery. The campaign will reach nurses through [...]

The AHA has published another 115 examples of strategies that are helping hospitals and health systems recruit and retain employees. "Workforce Ideas in Action 4" brings to 564 the number [...]

* A survey by the Greater New York Hospital Association shows that while the aggregate number of employed nurses increased in 2003, hospitals' demand for nurses also increased, and vacancy [...]

As hospitals confront high turnover rates and vacancies among their nursing corp, many are reconfiguring the physical environment to offer some relief. The key feature: Decentralized nurse stations. While the [...]

When South Shore Hospital, Weymouth, Mass., redesigned its special care nursery in preparation for upgrading it to a neonatal intensive care unit, new "code pink" emergency call buttons were installed [...]