Healthcare financial management : journal of the Healthcare Financial Management Association
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Healthc Financ Manage · Jul 2009
Something old is something new again: structuring physician practice acquisitions.
A physician employment contract should give careful consideration to: Hours of practice. Control that can be exercised by the hospital. ⋯ Compensation formulas and benefits. Covenants not to compete.
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Hospital employment of physicians can lead to better quality, coordination of care, and increased efficiency. The employment model is likely to be better suited for healthcare reforms that require a great degree of physician-hospital integration. A sophisticated analysis of the employment model must take into consideration physician-related costs and payments, access, competitive positioning, and alignment of incentives. Analysis of the physician employment should be performed in the context of all the strategic options available to a hospital.
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To improve patient flow in the ED, hospitals should: Establish a measure of patient demand by hour, and design a system to handle it. Appropriately capacitate triage processes and systems. ⋯ Devise a method of tracking patients and results. Field a willing staff with a burning platform.
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The nation's short-term acute care hospitals (STACHs) have reported nearly $124 billon in uncompensated care costs since federal fiscal year 2003. Although Medicare requires acute care hospitals to report uncompensated care costs, more than 20 percent of Medicare cost reports submitted by STACHs over the past five years have not complied fully with that requirement. Although increased costs of uncompensated care have affected different types of hospitals in different ways, virtually all STACHs have been challenged by these costs.