Sg2 Blog

As healthcare organizations face unprecedented workforce and financial challenges, much emphasis is placed on capacity constraints with rising acuity and regulatory scrutiny as powerful underlying trends. Many systems struggle to find the right balance between their margins and their missions, and often see their capacity realities outweigh their community's health equity needs. Or, if they've lau...

Debra “Deb” Raupers, MSN, RN, is the enterprise chief nurse executive for the Guthrie Clinic, based in Sayre, Pennsylvania. Q: To start us off, can you talk us through your career progression as a nursing professional and how you came to your current role at Guthrie? A: I have been in nursing for over 30 years, and it's been a wonderful career within the Guthrie Healthcare System. I w...

Most health care systems by now have defined their strategy for addressing value-based care (VBC)—even if that strategy is to minimize their involvement in VBC arrangements. To stay relevant, strategies require regular evaluation to consider current trends and market conditions. This is especially true with VBC, since VBC touches every aspect of health care financing and delivery. Any market...

In early 2024, the health care data ecosystem experienced a disruption. Long-standing assumptions about the reliability of claims data were challenged, and many organizations found themselves navigating with limited visibility. And for a moment, the industry paused. But we didn’t. At Sg2, a Vizient company, we took that moment of disruption as a signal to accelerate. Rather than just restore...

Maria Toler is the founding and managing partner of SteelSky Ventures, based in Atlanta. Q: Let’s start by learning a bit about your background. How did your career path evolve and what led you to start SteelSky Ventures? A: I’m an entrepreneur to my core. I launched my first company, Collegeboxes, as a college student, and it was eventually acquired by U-Haul. That experience c...

Numerous issues continue to impact health systems’ payment and accounts receivables. Among the top challenges, according to the recent Vizient® Payer Strategies Network Survey, are clinical and technical denials, DRG downgrades and claim delays.  In response, health system finance teams are deploying myriad tactics to address payer compliance issues. They’re having mixed succe...

Digital transformation remains a key strategic goal for the health care industry, and the ongoing pressure to optimize workflows, maximize human resources and adjust to powerful technologies like generative AI has led to a resurging interest in the smart hospital concept. Broadly defined, a smart hospital is one that is fully digitized and interconnected across the care continuum, leveraging inter...

Virtua Health is a five-hospital system with more than 350 locations in southern New Jersey, including 40+ ambulatory surgery centers, seven emergency departments, and seven urgent care centers, as well as telehealth options; its specialties include orthopedics and advanced surgery. The system aimed to optimize its digestive disease services after acquiring several gastroenterology groups and Lour...

I had just finished giving a presentation to a room of hospital CEOs on the current AI landscape when one of the executives raised her hand. “Is AI really going to be a thing in health care? We’ve spent over a decade installing EHRs in our system and all they have done is increased cost and burnout. And with cybersecurity threats, I feel AI is only going to make things worse,” she said. I responde...

St. Luke’s Hospital, a nonprofit health system in the greater St. Louis area, consists of two hospitals with 636 beds, two ambulatory surgery centers, eight urgent care facilities, nearly 200 employed physicians, and a medical staff of over 1,000 physicians across 60 specialties. Post-pandemic, the hospital faced challenges due to the lack of a formalized strategic plan and wanted to refine ...