Costs & Cost Controls
OR Business Management Summit Announces 2026 Program Committee
Rockville, MD—June 24, 2025—OR Business Management Summit announced today its 2026 Program Committee—a dedicated, diverse team of perioperative business management leaders with deep experience in operational efficiency, financial performance, and strategic OR leadership. The event will take place February 9–11, 2026, at the Hilton Austin in Austin, TX. A strategically…
Bad debt climbs as patient defaults, denials impact hospital revenue growth
Editor's Note Bad debt—payments hospitals expected to collect but ultimately had to write off—is increasing across hospitals as patients struggle to pay their share of healthcare costs and insurers raise the rate of claim denials, Modern Healthcare reported June 19. Citing a Kaufman Hall analysis of data from about 700…
Tariffs stir uncertainty in hospital supply chains, health insurance premiums
Editor's Note Recent reporting from Axios reveals hospitals and health insurers are reporting new concerns about rising tariffs and trade policy uncertainty, with the former delaying purchasing decisions and the latter planning premium increases as a result. In the first article, published June 18, the outlet reports that health system…
Ascension expands with AMSURG mega-deal as Surgery Partners doubles down on independence
Editor's Note Two major players in outpatient surgical care are taking sharply different paths: Surgery Partners is rejecting a buyout bid, while Ascension is making a bold acquisition to rapidly expand its ambulatory surgery center (ASC) footprint. Surgery Partners has formally declined a takeover proposal from Bain Capital, Ambulatory Surgery…
Global growth stalls as tariffs, debt, policy shifts throttle recovery, World Bank warns
Editor's Note The global economy is losing steam, with the World Bank forecasting the weakest growth in a non-recession year since 2008—citing protectionist trade policies, stubborn debt, and rising interest rates as key drivers of the downturn. According to the Axios June 9 article, the World Bank’s latest economic outlook…
NIH staff revolt, new analysis affirm the critical role and vulnerability of US academic science
Editor's Note Several hundred National Institutes of Health (NIH) employees have issued a rare internal rebuke of the agency’s current leadership under Director Jay Bhattacharya, STAT June 9 reports. The open letter, dubbed the “Bethesda Declaration,” criticizes abrupt Trump-era policy changes, including the cancellation of health equity and LGBTQ+ research,…
High drug manufacturing costs threaten hospital-led pharmacy expansion
Editor's Note Hospitals are ramping up in-house pharmacy operations to boost revenue and improve care, but high US manufacturing costs continue to stall a broader federal effort to reshore drug production, Modern Healthcare June 5 reports. As detailed in the article, an aging, medically complex population is driving demand for…
Significant CMS moves include withdrawal of emergency abortion care guidance
Editor's Note CMS has rescinded a 2022 guidance that protected clinicians providing emergency abortion care under the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA), removing a key federal safeguard for providers in states with abortion restrictions, according to a June 2 article in Becker’s Hospital Review. The guidance, originally issued…
Leaders translate legislative priorities to perioperative practice
The wave of new legal requirements for surgical smoke evacuation across the country has given OR leaders a crash course in how to act on any new legislation. Based on this experience, complying with other new and pending laws will put these skills to the test. Major hurdles are likely…
Study: OR waste training boosts recycling, but impact fades with time
Editor's Note A single training session on waste segregation significantly increased recycling rates among OR staff, but gains began to erode within two months, according to a study published May 26 in Nature: Scientific Reports. Conducted at Ankara University Cebeci Hospital, the quasi-experimental study assessed the impact of a single-session,…
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