A few months ago, I had the opportunity to address approximately 80 facility engineers from the hospital industry on the topic of staffing, benchmarking, and dealing with outsourcing. The interaction between us was very interesting, as it was evident to me that these facility managers had a lot to say about the “state-of-the-state” relative to managing the healthcare business.
The first topic of discussion addressed the active merging and partnering among many of the hospitals. Even with strategic business plans to regroup and reorganize, hospitals continue to fail. It was noted that in one state, 16 out of 31 hospitals would be “in the red” by year’s end. This downturn in business resulted in the following observations by the participants: