By Pamela J. Gallagher
In my decades of leadership in healthcare, I have learned the hard way that not every person with a “C” in their title or who has been appointed to a board of directors understands what it means to lead. These deficient “leaders” are always looking for a magical solution to their organization’s issues, without considering that their insufficient leadership might be their common source.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
Everywhere I see headlines about “The Great Resignation.” Many are pontificating about why people are leaving jobs or about unemployed individuals’ motivations for choosing to delay looking for a new position. However, I am particularly concerned with the employees who are left behind to pick up the slack as open positions remain unfilled.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
It’s been 18 months since COVID-19 changed everything, and I am exhausted. We have endured tremendous loss as a society: loss of life, finances, jobs, routines, community…and the list goes on. Coping with uncertainty has become “normal.”
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
Healthcare organizations spend tens of millions on sophisticated data collection and storage, yet it is hard to define what data is worth to an organization. What is its true value? This depends entirely on how the organization uses it. If an organization does not understand how to interpret and make use of their current and historical data, they will not optimize the return on this significant investment.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
For organizations and their leaders, the past year has been one of upheaval, intense challenges, and new opportunities. The word resilience has been on the tip of every leader’s tongue and the subject of many articles. The leadership of organizations that have been able to rapidly and repeatedly adapt or pivot as the world changed demonstrated that resiliency is the key to success.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
The need for strong leadership in the healthcare industry has come into stark relief during the pandemic. Good leaders shined, while organizations whose executives were only equipped to deal with the status quo struggled. COVID-19 has tested the abilities and skills of healthcare leaders. The ones who embraced uncertainty, had built strong teams, and lived by their personal and organizational values before the pandemic have led most effectively during this past year.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many healthcare professionals were making predictions about telehealth’s effectiveness and the possibility of its post-pandemic adoption (including me). Nearly a year after the rapid rise in telehealth usage brought on by the virus, we are starting to get a clearer picture of telehealth’s role in the healthcare landscape as we inch closer to post-pandemic life.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
Hospitals and health systems have spent the past decade responding to patient and government demands for increased price transparency, and the demand only continues. While the healthcare industry has made strides in ensuring patients know the cost of their care up-front, consumer expectations are growing to include that hospitals should be able to explain how their costs are determined.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
Patients have been begging for affordability for decades, and the healthcare industry’s reluctance to innovate and adapt to patient demands has left a door open for retailers to move into the healthcare business. I believe this will be great for healthcare, but potentially disastrous for health systems.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
In recent decades, many companies have adopted the maxim, “Do what you do best, and outsource the rest.” From the ability to focus on the core of their business to gaining outside expertise to boosting their quality of service, there are many reasons outsourcing may be appealing to an organization.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
Hiring an interim executive has long been thought of as a band-aid solution on the heels of an unexpected resignation or a way to give a potential new leader a trial run before committing. But with more businesses taking on flexible staffing approaches combined with the ups and downs of the economy over the past 15 years, companies have realized the financial and strategic benefits of engaging an interim executive rather than seeking to make an immediate permanent hire.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
In 2019, emergency departments (ED) across the U.S. saw an average of 2.1 million patients per week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Over the past several decades, healthcare organizations have invested large amounts of money, time, and effort to study the trend of ever-increasing numbers of high-utilizers in the ED and discover solutions to slow this growth. Hospitals have offered care navigators, clinics for less emergent issues, and countless other alternatives, but with next to no progress. People, it seems, just wanted to come to the ED.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, more commonly referred to as HIPAA, has been in effect for nearly two decades. In that time, no crisis has challenged the fabric of those regulations like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
Whether in reports from journalists, briefings from government officials, or socially-distanced conversations with next-door neighbors, “unprecedented” seems to be the word on everyone’s lips these days.
It is certainly true that in the United States, we have not experienced anything quite like the societal, economical, and public health impacts of COVID-19 in our lifetime. However, if we look into the not-too-distant past, we see that today’s events are not entirely unprecedented, and that the past may offer perspective to the healthcare industry as we find a way forward.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
The spread of COVID-19 has turned the U.S. healthcare industry upside down, and healthcare executives and professionals are having to relearn how to care for patients in the midst of a pandemic. The loss of life and peace of mind are sobering. I also believe that the way we deliver care during the coronavirus can provide healthcare leaders with an opportunity to re-imagine how we care for our patients in a post-pandemic world.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
There is reluctance in the healthcare industry to adopt new price transparency technology. Some healthcare providers are ignoring it all together, saying they’ll wait and see if anything comes of it.
But this technology isn’t “coming.” It’s already here. With the technology in place and demands for increased affordability coming from consumers and legislators alike, this technology is just one little tilt from being mainstream—and I believe that it can change the healthcare industry for the better.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
The relationship between physician and patient, has been the foundation of healthcare, built on empathy, honesty, and trust. Will moves toward increased price transparency change this foundational aspect of healthcare?
Patient-physician relationship
While there is wisdom in using pricing information from various hospitals and clinics when shopping services such as MRIs or routine blood tests, the ability to price-compare facilities or major surgeries could potentially disrupt the patient-physician relationship. For some, a difference in cost would be enough to make them go to a different hospital or request a different prescription than the one their doctor recommends. An overemphasis on cost when making care decisions may lead people to question what their doctor says and make it difficult to work together toward their long-term health goals.
Physicians want to provide the best outcomes to those in their care, so it can be particularly frustrating when costs get in the way of the optimal course of treatment. On the other hand, it is increasingly important that doctors understand the costs associated with the recommendations they are making to their patients.
Read More
By Pamela J. Gallagher
The federal government has introduced price transparency policies in hopes that consumers will be able to compare services and receive quality care that won’t break the bank. But not enough has been done to equip consumers to determine the overall value of the care they receive.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
With increased calls for healthcare pricing transparency from consumers and government entities alike, hospitals’ chargemasters are moving from proprietary information to public knowledge. However, putting chargemasters under the microscope has not led to the clarity that patients are seeking regarding quality care at a price they can afford.
Nearly two-thirds of physician respondents in a 2019 NEJM Catalyst survey said that patients do not have enough information to affect the cost of their own healthcare–related decisions, and more than three-quarters of respondents say that assessing the total cost of care is extremely challenging for patients.
Read MoreBy Pamela J. Gallagher
A hospital’s charge description master (CDM), or chargemaster, is often referred to as the “heart” of the healthcare revenue cycle. It includes codes for every procedure, material used, medication, and service that a healthcare organization provides its patients. It is the structure that drives the hospital, and is the starting point for billing patients and insurers and complying with public reporting. A typical health care system chargemaster may contain 15,000 to 25,000 entries, according to Becker’s Hospital Review.
Read More
