by Tony Chen

Well, the day has come for my last post here at Hospital Impact. After transitioning this blog over to FierceHealthcare, and after I was laid off from my hospital job, I'm now focused full-time on a few new start-ups in the healthcare and Web 2.0 arenas. You can still follow me on twitter @hospitaltony and read posts from me at the sg2.com community website.

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Now that I've moved on as the blogger-in-chief/founder, you may be asking, "what will happen to Hospital Impact?" In short, we'll continue onward. I have to say that Fierce has done a great job transitioning this blog. Hospital Impact now has more than 8,500 subscribers. I'm proud to be associated with the Fierce brand--if you haven't checked out their free email newsletters, I've found them to be some of the most insightful and relevant newsletters available.

In addition, we'll continue to have a great blogging crew that includes:

* Christopher Cornue, CEO of McKee Medical Center.
* Joe Wasserman, CEO of Lakeland Healthcare.
* John Cunningham, VP, Acute Division at Universal Health Services and Adjunct Faculty in the Drxel University School of Nursing and Health Professions.
* Kenneth Cohn, MD, a practicing surgeon and physician entrepreneur.
* Anthony Cirillo, Healthcare speaker/author and patient experience expert.

There are others coming aboard as well, and we'll continue to feature guest posts from hospital executives from across the country.

I also wanted to introduce to you all the new publisher for Hospital Impact, as well as the entire FierceHealthcare portfolio, Wendy Johnson. Feel free to email her at wjohnson@fiercemarkets.com with any questions, topics you want covered, ideas or thoughts about Hospital Impact.

Finally, I want to thank all of you for reading and supporting me throughout all these years. It's odd, but true, that I've made some lifelong friends through this blog. I've shared meals with you at conferences and I've met so many of you via email and twitter and through the back-and-forth comments. Thanks also to all the bloggers who wrote with so much humor, insight and humanity. You can bet I will be checking in and commenting--I'll still being part of this great Hospital Impact community as a fellow reader.

Thank you all again, and maybe it is fitting that I end my last post with the still-relevant question that I started with with my very first post:

"What will it take for hospitals to be the best run organizations on the face of the planet?"