by Christopher Cornue

Over the past several months, I've noticed a significant shortage of a very important role in hospitals--that of the strategist or planner. These are the folks that understand the market dynamics, the new innovative approaches to care, niches that may exist for evolving technology and are able to collaborate with leadership to develop a vision for the organization's future.

I believe this type of individual is absolutely necessary for the success of an organization, especially during this "economic downturn"--what better way for a hospital to stay ahead of their competition and leverage ripe opportunities for growth, new service development and revisions of current services than to have dedicated folks remain one step ahead of everyone else.

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With the recent release of Apple's iPhone 3G S, FierceMobileHealthcare decided to take a brief look at 15 commonly used free healthcare apps for the iPhone according to sites like apptism, iAppHealth and Apple.

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by John Domansky

Marketing and promoting a hospital or health system is not just a marketing department's responsibility these days--I believe that it is the responsibility (and obligation) of all of the employees. In other words, a "Village" is needed to market and promote the great things that are going on in hospitals on a daily basis.

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by Nick Jacobs

Frontiers of Health Services Management published its summer 2009 report on Bullying in Healthcare recently. In this edition, they took an in-depth look into the problems of bullying in the workplace. As many of you know, I have been pontificating about the devastating impact of bullying for a dozen years now, and between the Joint Commission's stand and features like this one, the topic is finally beginning to get the attention that is needed to address the absolutely horrible outcomes prompted by those individuals in healthcare who have long lived as bullies.

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by Toe Knee Chin*

If you have been following my twitter feed, you'll know that I was laid off from the business development director role at my health system about six weeks ago. I was called into my boss's office and the HR professional was also sitting at the table. Even though I had prepared for this moment and I knew it was coming, my heart was still pumping when I heard, "Unfortunately...Your position was one of the ones that has been eliminated."

Thousands of times over, this is happening in hospital offices across the country. In fact, just in Chicagoland alone, there's probably been 1,000-plus layoffs. As such, this is obviously a pretty touchy and raw subject for many. Nonetheless, for me, at the risk of sounding a little insensitive or overly positive, I've taken this whole situation as a great opportunity, and am looking at it as great timing.

I don't get philosophical too often here at Hospital Impact, but maybe this topic deserves a bit of just that. Here are some things I've been thinking about:

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