There have been quite a few successful hospital turnarounds recently:
- Maricopa Medical Center: $12MM in debt to $25MM in the bank in 6 months.
- Tufts-New England Medical Center: $25MM loss to break-even in one year
- Amsterdam Memorial Healthcare: $4.7MM loss to $0.4MM profit in one year
- Detroit Medical Center: $60MM loss to $9MM profit in two years
- Western Suburban Hospital: $19MM loss to break even in 1 year.

So, what's the common thread?
The common thread is that all of these turnarounds resulted from strongly-led team-based effort on several different fronts. If there is any "silver bullet," it is this vague, difficult concept of leadership. Those who led these turnarounds did these things well:
1. Rallied their leaders around them. And if they didn't have strong leaders already, they hired them. Hospital leadership is hard enough even in good times.
2. Attacked the problem on multiple fronts. They simultanously cut costs (revamped staffing practices, renegotiating their credit, renegotiating supply cost), increase revenues (rev cycle management, denials mgmt, contract negotiations, new channels for referrals, marketing new points of differentiation), and improve employee morale (see how this HCA hospital did it)
3. Focused on the key opportunities. Despite the multi-pronged approach, these leaders didn't try to solve everything at once. They focused on the high-impact areas first.

Balancing #2 & #3 is essentially a function of how well you do #1.