by Tony Chen

I just got back from taking the CHE Certification exam and I'm glad to report that I passed (barely, I think!). Going into the exam, I was very unsure about my level of preparedness. This is really the first time I've gone into an exam with no idea how well or poorly I would do. Nor did I know what score I needed to pass - ACHE rightfully doesn't tell you what the "passing grade" is. All I knew is that 30% of takers fail.

Out of the 170 questions, I "marked" 65 questions that I was only 50% sure (I had ruled out 2 of the 4 answers). And it turns out that's about how many I missed - probably a bit more than half of those 65 + a few careless mistakes.

My two weakest areas were by far HR and law/regs. My two strongest - business and finance (fringe benefit of working at HFMA for those 3 years!). Anyway, enough about my test experience! For all of you still studying or thinking about taking the test, here's 2 things I would've done differently:

(1) Paid more attention to terms / concepts in my everyday reading. If I had just quickly took the 2 minutes to understand terms, concepts, and acrynoms that I encountered while reading ModernHealthcare, news stories, or Healthcare Executive, over time... my general healthcare knowledge would've broadened significantly.

(2) I should've taken Nick Jacobs' advice - sit down and have lunch with individual functional leaders in procurement, legal, operations, nursing, medical staffing, and HR and just ask them lots of questions. This would've raised questions that I should've been asking and given me a good start at new relationships within my organization.

Anyway, I will enjoy the rest of the year as a CHE and wonder if I will be the shortest-standing CHE in ACHE history - 3 days (from everything I can tell, I'll convert over to FACHE per the new policy on 1/1/2007). More importantly, now that I'm done studying for any more tests, more time for blogging!

Have a happy and safe new year! In the meantime, go check Hospital Impact Blogger (and also newly CHE'ed) Andrew Barna's new website Healthcare Tomorrow.

by Tony Chen

so I've been having major blogger's block recently. Mostly, it's due to the fact that I've been trying to study for my FACHE exam (coming up on 12/28). Everyone told me to read "The Well-Managed Healthcare Organization" as the go-to source, but I've been finding it difficult to digest. Have you ever read something two or three times, arrived at the end of the chapter, and realized you didn't learn one single thing? I feel that way a lot with this book. And it's not because I already know it - somehow I just don't know what to retain.

It really hit me the other day that I work in a hospital. I heard a sentence that had just as many acronyms as actual words...

"Should we use CBT, ICD-9, CDM, or DRG?"

Loaded question - anyone know the answer?

It's been a while since I updated ya'll on all the hospital administration blogs that are out there. Even though we are few and far between, we've grown by leaps and bounds in the last few months. Doctor blogs, nurse blogs, patient blogs, and healthcare policy wonk blogs are all fairly well documented, but not hospital administration. So, here are the folks blogging from the front lines of hospital leadership.

Of course, I have to start with the three other bloggers at here hospital impact.

- Nick Jacobs at WinberBlog - Nick is the first hospital CEO to start a blog - he's an unconventional CEO that has unconventional wisdom and insights.

- Andrew Barna at HealthcareTomorrow - Andrew is Director, Special Projects at Stanford Medical Center and has pithy, concise analysis on healthcare trends he sees.

- Craig Ahrens at The Business of Healthcare - Craig is Manager at ECG Management Consulting and does quite a bit of service line improvement work. His first-of-its-kind "healthcare talkshow" lets us hear things straight from the horse's mouth.

- Paul Levy at Running a Hospital - Paul is President/CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He's a relatively late-comer (just started in August 2006), but has already developed quite a following, from everyday Bostonians to national policy wonks. Arguably the hospital administrator blog getting the most attention.

- Christina Thielst at Christina's Considerations - she's a HCA hospital COO. Back from healthcare consulting with a vengeance! Lots of good focus on RHIOs and HIT.

- Dr. William Roper at "Roper on Health" - Dr. Roper is CEO of UNC Health System - for some reason, the blog hasn't really caught too much attention. In part, it's because Roper rarely offers opinions and other posts sometimes seem more like UNC PR.

- Joe at Joe Oncology - Joe heads up two cancer centers in the Southeast and wonders how to balance compassionate care and hard-nosed budgeting.