ED visits

It’s no surprise in a general way that an annual survey of the American College of Healthcare Executives has found that hospital executives said their biggest concern in 2014 was their institutions’ financial challenges. Of more interest is how they ranked their top 10 challenges:

1. Financial challenges
2. Healthcare reform implementation
3. Governmental mandates
4. Patient safety and quality
5. Care for the uninsured/underinsured
6. Patient satisfaction
7. Physician-hospital relations
8. Population-health management
9. Technology
10. Personnel shortages

It’s interesting that population-health management is still so low considering the inexorable move to risk contracts. The execs are just trying to get through the year, and many will be retired by the time that risk contracts became the major game in town.

Within  financial challenges, hospital CEOs ranked Medicaid reimbursement, bad debt and decreasing inpatient volume as their top concerns.

Perhaps surprisingly, Fierce Healthcare noted, “Of all financial concerns, emergency department (ED) overuse was ranked lowest, despite reports that the implementation of the Affordable Care Act has led to an influx of ED visits.”