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After years of monetary tingle, a more restrictive stance from the Federal Reserve is creating a chill. A sustained higher interest rate environment may require finance teams to rethink external capital formation strategies.

Financial reserves are essential to the sustainability of any college or university. Integrating reserve goals to strategic planning through development of a strategic financial plan helps ensure that sufficient reserves will be available to meet the institution’s needs.

The rating committee is central to the rating process: all rating decisions are made by the committee, not an individual. In her new blog, Lisa Goldstein identifies five things to know about what happens in a rating committee.

Fitch Ratings recently downgraded the United States’ long-term rating. Healthcare confronts a different manifestation of the same pressures confronting the U.S., and the lesson for leaders is that governance and planning systems matter.

During times of financial challenge, hospitals tend to aggressively cut back on both planning and the execution of overall strategy. But is this the right road for hospitals to take at this time?

For the Federal Reserve, a soft landing means we arrive at the 2% inflation target without a recession. For healthcare, a soft landing is operating and investment entity recovery that stabilizes credit positioning and facilitates capital formation.

C-suites across America are moving to stronger measures to assure the financial survivability and competitiveness of their organizations. Data and analysis suggest that reductions in force are among the measures being taken today.

As organizations prepare for rating agency presentations, financial performance will continue to occupy much of the agenda. But analysts also will want an update on long-term strategies as performance stabilizes and the industry resets to a new status quo.

Hospital executives have given the physician employment strategy considerable thought. Here are four observations from healthcare leaders who are rethinking the physician employment model.

The physician employment model is clearly broken and in need of a near-term fix. The critical question for health system leaders is how to reconsider physician employment within the hospital operating plan.

The challenges facing health system leaders today are so diverse, interconnected, and relentless that an incremental management approach won’t work. The best response is grounded in simultaneous and tightly integrated efforts across multiple areas of focus.

Issuance of tax-exempt debt is one of the most affordable ways for institutions to finance large capital projects. The affordability of debt is partly contingent on an institution’s credit rating, and unrestricted financial reserves are a significant component of that rating.