Important lessons from AHERF's downfall: Strong governance and oversight of management are needed to ensure accountability; Disciplined growth strategies need to be supported by rigorous financial planning and feasibility analysis; Physician integration is critical to grow market share, but needs to be methodical and measured; Robust information systems are necessary ...

To ensure that their organizations achieve operational and strategic success, healthcare CFOs should: Focus on metrics that are most clearly associated with strategic success. Build synergy and management effectiveness into reporting processes by integrating measures for compliance, performance, and risk management. Target the precise levers within and outside the organization ...

The impact of employees' collective perceptions of being trusted by management was examined with a longitudinal study involving 88 retail stores. Drawing on the appropriateness framework (March, 1994; Weber, Kopelman, & Messick, 2004), the authors develop and test a model showing that when employees in an organization perceive they are ...

Business intelligence--technology to manage and leverage an organization's data--can enhance healthcare organizations' financial and operational performance and quality of patient care. Effective BI management requires five preliminary steps: Establish business needs and value. Obtain buy-in from managers. Create an end-to-end vision. Establish BI governance. Implement specific roles for managing data ...

Healthcare institutions are particularly vulnerable to negligent hiring liability which holds employers responsible for their employees' improper conduct. Several methods are simple and inexpensive yet many employers neglect to employ them effectively, the author, an attorney and security management consultant, points out. In this article, he spells out what can ...

We used standard financial techniques and a return-on-educational-investment model to calculate the required annual income necessary to render additional fellowship training in female pelvic medicine and reconstructive pelvic surgery financially neutral. To explore a range of potential outcomes, we conducted a sensitivity analysis that used various discount rates and retirement ...

Adventist HealthCare developed a workshop with a reality simulation game as an engaging means to teach nonfinancial managers about the relationships between cash flow, income statements, and balance sheets. Thirty AHC staff, about half financial and half nonfinancial, were trained as workshop facilitators, and all managers with budget oversight were ...

The red palm weevil Rhynchophorus ferrugineus Olivier (Curculionidae/Rhynchophoridae/Dryophthoridae) is a lethal pest of young coconut palms, Cocos nucifera L. (Arecales: Arecaceae), with a highly aggregated population distribution pattern. R. ferrugineus is managed in several coconut growing countries using area-wide pheromone based programmes that need a substantial commitment of funds over ...

Increasing longevity and the growing proportion of the aged in the population in most countries have served to focus on the question of how governments and older people can finance living, health, and care options in retirement. Prudent management of income and assets is an increasingly complex and important aspect ...

AIM: This paper is a report of a study to investigate healthcare managers' perspectives on factors contributing to the increase of healthcare employees on sick leave for burnout symptoms. BACKGROUND: Current turbulent healthcare reorganization has resulted in structural instability, role conflicts and vague responsibility commitments, all of which contribute to ...

Medical practice leadership teams, often consisting primarily of physicians with limited financial backgrounds, must make important business decisions and continuously monitor practice operations. In order to competently perform this duty, they need financial reports that are relevant and easy to understand. This article explores financial reporting and decision-making in a ...

How do some firms produce a pipeline of consistently excellent managers? Instead of concentrating merely on strengthening the skills of individuals, these companies focus on building a broad organizational leadership capability. It's what Ulrich and Smallwood--cofounders of the RBL Group, a leadership development consultancy--call a leadership brand. Organizations with leadership ...

The revenue cycle management environment is dynamic. Revenue cycle leaders are now responsible for additional functional areas and have to deal with new financing arrangements that expose the organization to greater financial risk. Financial managers can use key performance indicators and the suggested practice processes checklist to determine whether their ...

Despite the great sums of money companies dedicate to talent management systems, many still struggle to fill key positions - limiting their potential for growth in the process. Virtually all the human resource executives in the authors' 2005 survey of 40 companies around the world said that their pipeline of ...

In this study, the authors examined how individual gender-related attitudes and beliefs affect the reactions of men and women to gender diversity management programs in organizations. They found that whereas there were no significant between-sex differences in the effects of gender diversity management on organizational attractiveness, there were strong within-sex ...

Given the increasing market and technological uncertainty of capital investments, healthcare financial executives need to incorporate flexibility into their decision making. Traditional capital budgeting techniques do not take into consideration the need for flexibility, changes in the environment, or actions by management. In response, practitioners from various industries have adopted ...

Recent research has suggested that employees are highly affected by perceptions of their managers' pattern of word-action consistency, which T. Simons (2002) called behavioral integrity (BI). The authors of the present study suggest that some employee racial groups may be more attentive to BI than others. They tested this notion ...

Whether it's playing chess or planning for retirement, we all have strategies for different situations in our lives. So why not apply, strategies in our practice ? Companies such as Dell, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot have depended on strategic plans to generatel millions of dollars and guide their organizations into ...

Though most traditional HR performance metrics don't predict organizational performance, alternatives simply have not existed--until now. During the past ten years, researchers Laurie Bassi and Daniel McMurrer have worked to develop a system that allows executives to assess human capital management (HCM) and to use those metrics both to predict ...

The aims of the study were to determine: (1) which components managers of Flemish not-for-profit healthcare organizations chose to incorporate in their mission statement, (2) how satisfied managers of Flemish not-for-profit healthcare organizations are with the formulation of various mission statement components and (3) if the managers of Flemish not-for-profit ...

Senior executives have long been frustrated by the disconnection between the plans and strategies they devise and the actual behavior of the managers throughout the company. This article approaches the problem from the ground up, recognizing that every time a manager allocates resources, that decision moves the company either into ...

The balanced scorecard is a strategic management system that impels managers to focus on the performance metrics that drive success. It measures the business process and links a management method for process improvement to strategic goals. A medical practice can use a balanced scorecard to improve operational performance and quality ...

One of the goals contained in the ASHRM Strategic Plan for 2007-2009 is to develop the risk management professional in a changing healthcare environment. The goal is tremendously important to all of us.

All these technology solutions enhance practice profitability and staff efficiency and are reasonably priced. If your office is not taking advantage of these tools, put them on your list of discussion points for the next partner meeting. Keep in mind, however, that tools on their own cannot solve reimbursement issues--financial ...

Finance managers can play a leading role in determining the success of physician employment by addressing physicians' financial concerns. Physicians can benefit from financial managers' help in clarifying how practice decisions affect financial outcomes, and making the entire process transparent. Communication should include validation of data integrity, development of targeted ...

The idea of establishing a market for organs is now the subject of unusual controversy. Proponents emphasize the concept of autonomy; opponents invoke fairness and justice. The controversy, however, has given sparse attention to what it would mean to society and medicine to establish a market in organs and to ...

In the 1990s, the turbulent environment continued to exert pressure on the management of cost, access, and quality of healthcare provision. To strengthen financial and market positions, mergers and acquisitions became popular strategies along with the reengineering of internal structures. Since this trend of restructuring and reengineering, an understanding of ...

AIM: To identify the experiences of primary care trust employees, the dental teams and other key individuals of the planning, implementation and management of a Personal Dental Services scheme. METHOD: A thematic analysis of a series of qualitative interviews with 29 individuals who were involved in the planning, implementation and ...

Does management talent transfer from one company to another? The market certainly seems to think so. Stock prices spike when companies announce new CEOs from a talent generator like General Electric. But how do these executives perform over the long term? The authors studied the careers of 20 former GE ...

To realize the goals of successive health strategies, managers in the Irish Health Sector will have to proactively facilitate optimal employee performance in line with policy objectives. Along with developing employee and teams' capabilities, these managers have begun to implement performance management to achieve the latter. However, there typically are ...

When employees believe they are being treated fairly-when they feel heard, when they understand how and why important decisions are made, and when they believe they are respected-their companies will benefit. Research shows that practicing process fairness reduces legal costs from wrongful-termination suits, lowers employee turnover, helps generate support for ...

In more than 30 essays for Harvard Business Review, Peter Drucker (1909-2005) urged readers to take on the hard work of thinking--always combined, he insisted, with decisive action. He closely analyzed the phenomenon of knowledge work--the growing call for employees who use their minds rather than their hands--and explained how ...

Management information systems (MIS) and decision support systems (DSS), used as part of broader healthcare technology management, are considered to be health technologies. As such, they should meet the criteria of affordability, appropriateness, cost-effectiveness, ease of use and sustainability if they are to be implementable and have a lasting impact ...

Many healthcare professionals question whether the industry's hospitals and multi-site systems are implementing the necessary executive development and succession planning systems to ensure that high potential managers are prepared and aptly selected to assume key executive roles. Survey data, case studies, and cross-industry comparisons suggest that healthcare organizations may face ...

Medical science has made revolutionary changes in the past few decades. Contemporaneously, however, healthcare has made incremental changes at best. One area within healthcare that best exemplifies this is the operating room (OR). The growing discrepancy between the revolutionary changes in medicine and the minimal changes in healthcare processes leads ...

PURPOSE: The purpose of this descriptive and cross-sectional study is to explore the relationships between managers' leadership styles and employees' job satisfaction in Isfahan University Hospitals, Isfahan, Iran, 2004. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: The data were collected through the distribution of two questionnaires among the 814 employees, first line, middle and senior managers ...

PURPOSE: The purpose of this article is to report on case study research conducted in a German hospital and describe the implications that the "Management by walking about" approach had on healthcare employees. "Management by walking about" is widely seen as one of the favoured procedures for increasing employee commitment ...

This article describes the performance appraisal process in terms of its three fundamental steps. defining job performance, measuring actual job performance, and providing job performance feedback. Given that most practice managers wear many hats and do not have extensive experience or staff support in human resources, the purpose of this ...

Widespread cooperation between domain experts and front-line clinicians is a key component of any successful clinical knowledge management framework. Peer review is an established form of cooperation that promotes the dissemination of new knowledge. The authors describe three peer collaboration scenarios that have been implemented using the knowledge management infrastructure ...

This study compares the requirements of three forest certification systems, the Sustainable Forestry Institute (SFI), the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), with the 2005 McDonald-Dunn Forest Plan Revision. The analysis was done with a series of matrices comparing the requirements of SFI and FSC ...

Making mistakes when dealing with staff in the myriad HR issues that EMS managers confront on a daily basis can lead to significant liability. HR mistakes can also have long-term impact on the health of the organization when staff members lose respect for their leaders and morale is decreased. Establishing ...

Artificial organs and regenerative medicine are the subjects of very active research and development (R&D) in Japan and various artificial organs are widely used in patients. Results of the R&D are presented at the annual conference of the Japanese Society for Artificial Organs (JSAO). Progress in the fields of artificial ...

The results of the present longitudinal study demonstrate the importance of implicit leadership theories (ILTs) for the quality of leader-member exchanges (LMX) and employees' organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and well-being. Results based on a sample of 439 employees who completed the study questionnaires at 2 time points showed that the ...

Managers often tend to behave as though they are responsive to different motivating forces than their employees. However, employees at all levels are much alike in terms of what they wish to obtain from their work. There are drives that vary in intensity from person to person, but the basic ...

One of the most resource intensive areas in many hospitals is the OR, which often accounts for more than 50% of a hospital's materials management budget. Surgical services managers often have no formal training in materials and financial management, but they are held accountable for one of the most costly ...

Strategic supply chain management differs from traditional supply chain management in that it leaves nothing to chance: It takes into account physician preference in product selection and pricing. It does not allow vendors to bypass supply chain leaders. Its leaders require a broad understanding of strategic, financial, and clinical issues. ...

The success of the NICU depends in large part on the manager's ability to continuously identify the high, middle, and low performers on the unit. To retain top performers, the manager must ensure a challenging work environment paired with zero tolerance for substandard performance. Middle performers need positive recognition and ...

A basic knowledge of financial accounting can help radiologists analyze business opportunities and examine the potential impacts of new technology or predict the adverse consequences of new competitors entering their service area. The income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement are the three basic financial statements that document the ...

This study's purpose was to assess the agreement between management and employee ratings of organizational policies and practices (OPP) involved in the return to work process following carpal tunnel surgery. As a part of the prospective community-based Maine Carpal Tunnel II Study, 65 manager and employee pairs completed a questionnaire ...

Forest certification has been promoted to encourage sustainable use of natural forests. While its use in industrial plantation forests has not always been welcomed (World Rainforest Movement 2002), forest certification offers great opportunities in the tropics. This paper assesses the profitability of forest certification of an industrial hardwood plantation in ...