Proposed federal rules on accountable care organizations are expected in December and Donald Berwick, MD, the new CMS administrator, is personally involved in the process, according to a CMS spokesman.

When group practices join a hospital or system, some of them prefer a quasi-independent status, says Ronald Bremer, president of Formation Strategies, a Kansas City, Mo.-based company that specializes in healthcare transactions, including hospitals buying up physician practices.  

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic, a 900-physician group practice in New Hampshire, has earned $13 million so far in the Medicare Physician Group Practice Demonstration, the model for accountable care organizations.Those earnings, which don’t include the last year of the five-year project, were…

The American Stroke Association recently presented Woodland Healthcare in Woodland, Calif., with the Gold Plus Award in July for their involvement with the Get With the Guidelines program, an initiative aimed at improving and maintaining quality stroke care and treatment.…

Every morning, administrators and department heads at St. Joseph Hospital in Kokomo, Ind., gather to discuss recent patient safety issues, possible problems that could occur in the next 24 hours and any staff complaints. By meeting in a "daily huddle"…

The New Paradigm of PartnershipHistorically, the relationship between hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers could be characterized in many cases as adversarial. Hospitals often perceived ASCs as a potential threat to their profitable outpatient surgery business, which in turn would hinder…

St. Joseph's Hospital in Elmira, N.Y., will acquire the assets of Internal Medicine Associates of the Southern Tier, according to a report by WETM News.

A viable accountable care organization (ACO) must preach and practice two challenging and often-overlooked imperatives:

Here are 14 issues physicians at ambulatory surgery centers across the country have identified as likely to have an impact on the ASC industry in the second half of 2010, many of which are relevant for the hospitals that partner…

Thomas Bland, CEO of Neshoba County General Hospital in Philadelphia, Miss., has called for 11 additional physicians to serve the needs of Philadelphia and Neshoba County, according to a Neshoba Democrat report.