John Bardis, chairman, president and CEO of MedAssets, discusses a variety of issues facing healthcare, not the least of which is the cost equation, which is unsustainable long term. Bardis talks about the dysfunctional economy, his challenges in running a now-public company, and the institutionalized lack of transparency in medical device pricing, which he believes leads to irrational high costs in healthcare. +

Three key strategies to effective service line management are skillful leadership, clear goals and accountability, and results measurement. Unfortunately, those are the areas that hospitals and health systems struggle with the most, says HealthLeaders contributor Keith T. Pryor. +

We've got it all wrong as to what constitutes "healthcare quality," says contributor Morley Robbins. Robbins says our mistake is in thinking that quality is a unicycle—a singularly focused discipline that measures and seeks to improve the caliber of our clinical and technical processes, thus assuring superior patient outcomes. This singular focus compromises the real depth of what determines "quality"?particularly as it relates to patients, their families, and caregivers, he says. +

Will a new era be a time of historic change in healthcare? HealthLeaders Media asked U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, Alegent Health CEO Wayne Sensor and North Shore-LIJ Health System CEO Michael Dowling to share their hopes. +