Benjamin Carter, senior vice president and CFO of Trinity Health in Novi, Mich., oversees the finances of one of the largest Catholic-based health systems in the country, and his role is about to become a lot bigger.

Although Mississippi is one of the poorest and sickest states in the country, Republican Gov. Phil Bryant has said the state will not take part in the federal healthcare reform law's Medicaid expansion, according to an Associated Press report.

St. Louis-based Centene Corp., one of the most prominent Medicaid HMOs in the country, said it plans to terminate its managed care contract with Kentucky's Medicaid program by next July due to its concerns with the state's high-cost Medicaid issues.

Reducing surgical complications for patients has the obvious benefits of better patient safety and quality of care, but it may perversely hurt hospital revenue and reimbursements as well, according to a study from Health Affairs.

When it comes to hospital care in the Dakotas, few systems are more prominent than Sanford Health, and Lisa Carlson has made sure the system's finances have remained among the strongest in the upper Midwest.

In fiscal year 2012, Winfield, Ill.-based Cadence Health recorded more than $1 billion in total revenue — the first time the system has surpassed that mark, according to a Crain's Chicago Business report.

Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare (pdf) announced it completed its private offering of $800 million in senior notes.

Although two major Medicare payment programs for rural hospitals have expired, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has said restoring those payments will be "one of my top priorities" before the end of this year, according to a Daily News report.

The idea of turning Medicare into a "premium support" program, or a voucher-based system, has been floating around for a long time now, and a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation (pdf) found that a premium support design would actually…

Reps. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) have proposed the Medicare Audit Improvement Act of 2012, a bill that would restructure the way Medicare Recovery Auditors — formerly known as recovery audit contractors — can review providers.