by Tony Chen

Here's a few things I've been hearing from other hospitals on the impact of this recession.

"Bad debt is going through the roof."

"Even administrative employees are being asked to take unpaid time off, go on furloughs."

"Merit increases are frozen. So are open positions."

"Surprisingly, volumes are up 5 to 8 percent from last year. It's just that we're not getting paid for the services we provided."

"We are actually having one of the strongest years in the hospital's history."

"We're actually doing okay, though we are reconsidering a major capital project."

One thing to recognize is that while we like to look at national numbers, our hospital systems all operate in local environments. Yes, all of our investment incomes were smashed, but each market (some folks say it's probably 250 to 300 local markets around the country) will have unique dynamics to deal with.

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by Tony Chen

Think back just a year ago, to February 2008. Oh, things back in the "good ole" days of 2008 were so much simpler. Consider the headlines of the day brought news such as Mitt Romney winning the Maine Caucus and Ralph Nader entering the 2008 presidential campaign. The Dow was down to 12,000 from high of 14,000, while the NASDAQ vacillated around 2,500.

At the risk of sounding insensitive, let's all step back and take a deep breath for a second. Most experts agree that in 12 to 18 months, this recession will be over. Things won't go back to normal--whatever that means--but things are going to be a whole lot better than they are now, psychologically and otherwise.

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by Tony Chen

Since we've blogged extensively in the past about hospitals and social media, here's a quick note: Henry Ford Hospital will be sharing a live kidney cancer surgery on Twitter on Monday.

From their PR team:

Dr. Craig Rogers will lead a surgical team from Henry Ford Hospital as they perform a robotic partial nephrectomy. The public will be able to receive updates and information from OR 25 at Henry Ford Hospital, and communicate with the surgeons via the Twitter microblogging service. Henry Ford is a teaching hospital.

Also, check out Ed Bennett's tally list of Hospitals using social networking tools. Can you believe that there's 60 hospitals on twitter already? Yes, that's only about 1 percent of the all the hospitals in the country.

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by Tony Chen

I encountered two very interesting articles recently about the health care/hospital sector. One was a narrated chart from McKinsey (free registration required) that basically showed value creation by healthcare sector over the last 20 to 25 years. As you can guess, the bottom line (yes, the one at the bottom all by its lonesome) represents providers. Since 1985, the provider sector was the only sector in healthcare to underperform the S&P 500.

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by Tony Chen

Regardless of your political affiliation, yesterday was a historical moment; we have just elected the first African-American President of the United States. As I stayed up to watch Senator Barack Obama's speech after two long years of campaigning, I was struck by three main thoughts while putting on my hospital impact blogger hat:

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