While healthcare executive applaud the benefits that health information exchanges (HIEs) can provide—such as improving the quality of clinical reporting and the coordination of care among physicians—the high costs of participating in an HIE is still an impediment, according to a study from healthcare management consulting firm Beacon Partners.
A hulking, 261-foot-tall outpatient surgery center planned for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center would free up the hospital's main building for critical procedures by creating new space for less intensive surgeries, the hospital claims. Sloan-Kettering estimates the extension will help an estimated 60 patients a day. But residents in the co-op next door at 440 East 62nd St. are saying the boxy 172,000-square-foot facility would be so close to them it would block daylight.
Maryland hospitals are buying more food locally, according to a new analysis. Forty hospitals in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Northern Virginia are now purchasing locally grown fruits and vegetables regularly during the growing season and nine are consistently purchasing meat or poultry produced by local farmers who use sustainable agricultural practices, according to Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment.
Cooper University Hospital has announced the appointment of Adrienne Kirby, PhD, FACHE, as Chief Operating Officer beginning Monday, Jan. 30. Kirby will be responsible for the administration and management of The Cooper Health System's health care delivery operations, including the hospital and physician organization. She will also support the Board and the President/CEO in establishing strategic direction for the organization and achieving its financial goals. Previously, Kirby served as president of Franklin Square Hospital Center in Maryland. She has spent most of her career in healthcare management in the Delaware Valley.
Upon completing a thorough nationwide executive search, Central Peninsula Hospital in Soldotna, Alaska, has hired Richard Davis to fill the role of chief executive officer. A seasoned healthcare executive with nearly 20 years of senior leadership experience, Davis will immediately assume his new duties at Central Peninsula. Davis joined Central Peninsula Hospital as chief operating officer in August 2011. Davis has a proven track record in the Alaska healthcare landscape, serving in leadership roles at Alaska Regional Hospital and Providence Hospital in Anchorage.
We asked a diverse group of health-care policy experts to discuss, in an exchange of emails, whether ACOs are an answer to what ails the health-care system. Our panelists: Donald M. Berwick, who stepped down Dec. 2 as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Tom Scully, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator from 2001 to 2004 and Jeff Goldsmith president of Health Futures Inc., a health-care consulting firm, and an associate professor of public-health sciences at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville.