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Avoiding Unnecessary Emergency Department Visits—Integrating the ED Into Your System of CARE
	By David Farkas, MD - September 1, 2010 Nearly 50% of ED visits are avoidable, but unnecessary ED visits are not about lack of coverage, they are about inappropriate usage and access gaps. Quality, convenience and accessibility must be vital components for any solution, as well as educatin ... Register or login to read more.
Postdischarge Clinics: Bridging the Care Continuum
	By Cynthia Wallner, PhD - August 31, 2010 Postdischarge clinics can reduce hospital readmissions and postdischarge emergency department (ED) visits and should focus on those patients who have the highest likelihood of being readmitted, including the uninsured, the elderly and patients with m ... Register or login to read more.
Growth Opportunities in the Neurosciences Abound, You Just Need to Know Where to Look
	By Jayme Zage, PhD - August 30, 2010 Neurosciences services are a focus of growth for many organizations—with good reason—they have been traditionally strong volume and financial drivers. The future remains just as promising, but knowing where to look for opportunities is key. This post ... Register or login to read more.
Integrating Diagnostics: A Critical Component of Accountable Care
	By Henry Soch - August 24, 2010 Health care systems that are developing an integrated diagnostics platform are at the forefront of care redesign, balancing disease-centric and patient-centric care. Learn more by reading about the highlights from the Sg2 2010 Diagnostics conference, ... Register or login to read more.
Do You Have the Tools to Dig Into Your Clinical Performance?
	By Nicholas Gryfakis - August 23, 2010 Health care data and performance improvement can be intimidating and overwhelming. Performance improvement should be driven by data and analytics, but the sheer quantity of potential measures can be a deterrent to effectively mining data. Sometimes ... Register or login to read more.
Tying Business Model Innovation to Systems of CARE
	By Ateret Haselkorn - August 18, 2010 Business model innovation is crucial in addressing changing market landscapes. The passage of health care reform legislation has generated questions and concerns and, with them, the opportunity for business model innovation. How can a firm improve th ... Register or login to read more.
Improving Performance in Brain Cancer Care
	By Trever Burgon, PhD - August 17, 2010 Brain cancer care requires highly specialized treatments that can vary widely among providers. In a recent Web seminar for Cancer and Neurosciences INSIGHT users, we highlighted metrics from the Sg2 INSIGHT database that reveal wide variation among p ... Register or login to read more.
Targeting MS-DRGs With the Highest Cost Reduction Opportunity
	By Steve Miff, PhD - August 16, 2010 Gradually, the reality is setting in that the chief imperative of the reform era will be driving down the cost of care. So where does one start? As a way to triage your efforts, Sg2 has identified the 10 diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) that hold the ... Register or login to read more.
Reform Readiness: Respond to Uncertainty With Action
	By Bill Woodson - August 12, 2010 Since the passage of national health reform in March, Sg2 has laid out its vision of how the business of hospitals will be transformed. Some of you have come back with good, hard questions. Let's reflect on some of the reasonable points of skepticism ... Register or login to read more.
Are Hospital-Acquired Conditions Pulling Down Your Overall Clinical Performance?
	By Karyn Wendling - August 11, 2010 Three case examples show how the right metrics and a concerted effort can reduce hospital-acquired conditions (HACs), a continuing target of scrutiny by payers. HACs unnecessarily drive up treatment costs and utilization of health care resources and ... Register or login to read more.
Sg2 Chairman's Letter August 2010: Health Reform and the Law of Unintended Consequences
	By Michael Sachs - August 9, 2010 There is an old story regarding French bakers: When the government put in place price controls that limited the amount that could be charged for croissants, the bakers just made them smaller so that people had to buy more to make a meal. Smaller cro ... Register or login to read more.
Cancer Programs Poised for Big Growth, Bigger Reform Impacts
	By Lisa Slama, PhD - August 5, 2010 Demand for cancer services will be strong over the coming decade—9% for inpatient services and 36% for outpatient services, which include chemotherapy and radiation. Reform will bring big changes to cancer programs in the form of insurer mandates, co ... Register or login to read more.
A Note From the CMO—Sg2 2010 Forecast Is More Cautious for the Reform Decade
	By John Peabody, MD, PhD, FACP - August 2, 2010 Sg2 forecasts that between 2010 and 2020 demand for inpatient services will be down by 2%, while demand for outpatient services will grow by 30%, with tremendous variation by service line and by disease. The demand for health care services is affecte ... Register or login to read more.
ABTF Highlight: Payers Use Gatekeeper Requirements and "Influence" to Slow Spine Utilization
	By Wade Johannessen, PhD - August 2, 2010 As reform legislation begins to change the health care marketplace, payers will be under increasing pressure to reduce costs. At this year's Annual Business and Technology (ABTF) meeting, we discussed one health plan's efforts to reduce utilization o ... Register or login to read more.
The Evolution of the Cardiovascular Program
	By Chad O'Connor - July 29, 2010 In CV services, our new reality encompasses flat volumes, decreasing margins, increasing scrutiny and the rise of some fierce competitive battles between hospitals and sometimes with our own subspecialists. This post reviews highlights from our 2010 ... Register or login to read more.

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