Operational Excellence

Is there a more intimidating phrase out there today than Big Data? It sounds like some sort of bully. Oh-oh, avert your eyes, Big Data is swaggering this way.
For years, Caitrin Houlihan sought solace in drugs and alcohol. She started smoking marijuana at age 12 and gravitated toward painkillers, angel dust, cocaine and heroin in her teens. “Where I grew up, it was very acceptable,” Houlihan, 38, says of her Boston neighborhood. “That’s how I knew how to…
Trustee Talking Points Trustee Talking Points Performance data give Medicare and other payers the ability to measure the value of health services. Value-based competition will thoroughly disrupt health care markets and will favor innovative players. Providers will need to reconsider what…
Trustee Talking PointsMisuse of prescription opioids is reaching crisis proportions in the United States, with an estimated 44 people dying every day from an overdose of such painkillers.The problem cuts across demographic and geographic categories, enveloping the young, the old, the rich, the poor…
Trustee Talking Points Trustee Talking Points Hospital leaders — executives and trustees — must pay attention to how facilities affect infection control and patient safety. Medicare and insurers are tying reimbursement to measures on health care-associated…
Infant mortality hits record low The U.S. mortality rate fell 2.3% in 2014, to a record low 582.1 deaths per 100,000 live births. The drop was led by a 13.5% decline in deaths from respiratory illness.
Trustee Talking Points Trustee Talking Points Cost is driving a rise in ambulatory care and a proliferation of outpatient settings. Technology enables these facilities to deliver care across multiple settings. Roughly eight models of ambulatory sites have emerged. Differences between these…
2015 was the year of the health care security breach. Nearly 100 million electronic health records were compromised, according to a December 2015 IBM Security report, blowing away the number of data breaches that occurred in the computer services and financial sectors.