All Featured Insights

The assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson drew a chilling response from much of the American public. While wholly inappropriate, this reaction suggests that America’s healthcare consumers might want something very different from what they currently receive.

With extension of the 2017 tax cuts identified as a key priority for the incoming Trump administration, offsetting expense actions will be needed to avoid increasing the federal deficit. Hospital leaders should be prepared for potential cuts to both the Medicaid program and the enhanced ACA subsidies enacted in 2021.

Recent efforts to contemporize primary care have proven that the best intentions, the smartest ideas, and a lot of money are no guarantee of commercial success. Corporate America has found primary care to be a confounding and, so far, unsuccessful business model.

Solo living is becoming much more common in American society. As the concept of the American family shifts, and in this case, unwinds, healthcare leaders need to be attuned to new demands—and nimble enough to meet them.

A new conversation about founder mode vs. management mode is challenging conventional thinking about leadership styles and organizational structures. In a new blog, Ken Kaufman defines the characteristics of founder mode and how it can prompt leaders to test their habits and beliefs about how to run an organization.

A shift in meaning of the term “brat” during the summer of 2024 marks a fundamental change in the notion of how to communicate with the public. This shift offers lessons that often contradict some of our deepest instincts about how to convey a message.

A question often asked by health system leaders is what will be required for future success. Responses from some of Kaufman Hall’s smartest consultants are featured in this new blog from Ken Kaufman. One common element: The need to make and stick with really hard decisions.

Hospitals face enormously complex operational challenges every day. The advanced analytics used by large commercial businesses can offer solutions that improve revenue, lower expenses, and enhance patient outcomes.

Health systems are faced with two conflicting realities. The first is that partnerships will continue to be a necessary and critical part of healthcare strategy. The second is that antitrust enforcement will continue to create strong barriers to these same partnerships.

Walmart’s failure as a healthcare provider points to some big problems in U.S. healthcare, including a difficult business model, an unfriendly reimbursement model, and a basic healthcare expense-to-revenue problem.

The many forces driving some hospitals to financial distress make it impossible to maintain the status quo. Leaders can move beyond a binary close-or-don’t-close decision to reconsider what it means to deliver healthcare in communities that struggle to support a hospital.

With hundreds of competing priorities, hospital executive teams must focus on something they that they know they can spend time on and get real results from. An intense focus on improving length of stay gives hospitals a significant advantage in financial performance.