On January 12, 2015, the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE) released their annual survey of top issues hospitals face. President and CEO of ACHE, Deborah J. Bowen, said “The survey results show that these are challenging times for CEOs and leadership teams, and we are all expected to do more with less.”
The survey asks CEOs (who are ACHE members) from over 1,000 community hospitals to rank the ten issues they feel are affecting their hospitals. ACHE received a 30.2 percent response rate (338 individuals), and results are shown in order of importance.
For the 11
th year in a row, hospital CEOs ranked financial challenges as the number one issue facing their organizations in 2014. Healthcare reform implementation and Governmental mandates tied for second, and patient safety and quality came in third.
Within the financial challenges category, respondents offered specific challenges were they most concerned, including:
- Medicaid reimbursement (including adequacy and timeliness of payment)
- Bad debt (including uncollectable emergency department and other charges)
- Decreasing patient volume
Source: Chicago, January 12, 2015; American College of Healthcare Executives; Top Issues Confronting Hospitals in 2014; 338 hospital CEOs; 338 of 1,118 community hospital CEOs or 30.2% responded; http://www.ache.org/pubs/Releases/2015/top-issues-confronting-hospitals-2014.cfm