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As a result of last year’s Affordable Care Act, hospitals in New York face challenges that range from converting to electronic records to preparing for tens of thousands of newly insured patients. The institutions must also clear those hurdles under the threat of increasingly lower Medicaid reimbursement rates.

After spending heavily through the recession to expand and modernize facilities, providers in the city are investing billions more—much of it on building—as they update operations to better deal with the industry’s emerging realities.

Click to read the full article: Hospitals shift spending to outpatient facilities

Forbes.com recently featured Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business Professor & Economist in their Thought Leaders series of videos. This one is titled Disrupting Hospitals, and in it Christensen discusses the flaws of hospital’s business models – he calls them “not just broken, but impossible.”  Anyone with an interest in the future of healthcare and hospitals in particular will find this worth watching:

Thought Leaders provides unprecedented access to the insight and expertise of some of the world’s biggest and brightest thinkers. Each month, Forbes tackles a topic of global importance, bringing you a series of exclusive, long-form weekly video interviews with experts in the field. These luminaries provide unique insight and creative solutions, and reveal the big, breakthrough ideas that will change the world.

Click here to view the episode of Thought Leaders: Disrupting Hospitals

Joan Dentler, MBA. Ms. Dentler has spent the past 15 years consulting for, developing and operating successful ASCs in 26 states. She has worked with clients providing direct services such as feasibility analysis, project design, partnership development, day-to-day management, physician recruitment and multi-disciplinary ASC troubleshooting.

Through these activities, she has personally conducted hundreds of interviews with surgeons to determine physician preferences in the structure and operations of ASCs and hospital surgical service delivery.

Ms. Dentler has worked as a hospital liaison for hospital/physician joint ventured surgery centers and an administrator of women’s health and pediatric primary care facilities. She holds an MBA from the University of Texas.

“It is going to have such a positive impact for out patients and the region,” said Dr. Al Mina, a general surgeon in Haywood County and one of 20 doctors who invested in the surgery center.

“It will be less institutional,” Poore said. “If you are having a simple, same-day surgery, you don’t have to go into the hospital.”

Patients who now bypass Haywood and travel to Asheville for outpatient surgery could stay closer to home thanks to the convenience of the new center.

Click here to read more: Outpatient center to improve patient experience

This time last year, Beckers Hospital Review published a list of the top 10 Challenges Facing Community Hospitals. Unfortunately many of these challenged still plague independent hospitals:

1. Lower discounts on supplies.
2. Lack of economies of scale.
3. Lack of negotiating clout with managed care.
4. Increasing compliance costs.
5. Lack of high-end service lines to drive profits.
6. Limited access to financing.
7. Inability to take on risk and drive ACO programs.
8. Loss of key physicians to bigger systems.
9. Inability to attract leadership.
10. Inability to shift resources.

Click to read the full article at Becker’s Hospital Review including commentary from 5 top experts in the field.

QUINCY, Mass. — When Claire Contos needed colon-cancer surgery recently, she could have gone to a top teaching hospital in Boston, 13 miles north of here. Instead, she chose the Quincy Medical Center.

“There’s a lot of compassion and understanding here,” says Contos, 83, who has lived in Quincy for 64 years. “I’d never have that same feeling” in Boston. Her surgeon was Dr. Thomas Fitzgerald, the son of a Quincy nurse and doctor she had known for years. “He’s devoted to his patients,” she says. “I can call him anytime, day or night.”

Contos’ affection for her local hospital, which was built 120 years ago to serve local shipbuilders and workers in nearby granite quarries, is echoed by many of Quincy’s 90,000 residents. But now, there are serious questions about whether the medical center can maintain its independence from corporate ownership or, over the long run, survive.

To staunch the red ink, the medical center laid off 14 nurses
and technicians and brought in a hospital turnaround specialist.

Click to read the full article at theFiscalTimes.com