Crunch time. CIOs balance cost and flexibility to plan for storing large volumes of diagnostic imaging data.

Faced with skyrocketing imaging data storage costs, CIOs at three healthcare facilities found alternatives that have enabled them to slash expenditures, monitor their storage requirements, and provide more cost-effective backup solutions.

Threat assessment. Enterprise risk management helps hospitals prepare for the unexpected.

Health care organizations are finally embracing enterprise risk management as a way to identify their vulnerabilities. Here's how to get started.

Disruptive physicians. An old problem comes under new scrunity in an era of patient safety.

How to handle the disruptive physician or other clinician is an old and complex problem that is coming under new scrutiny in an era of patient safety.

Leading a culture of safety.

A new Joint Commission standard puts the onus on the board to eliminate barriers to quality care.

Hospital-physician alignment.

Seeking better reimbursement, physicians are striking out on their own, making it more important than ever for hospitals to pursue formal alignment arrangements with them.

Hospitals go green. Trustees discover that being gentle to the environment can actually save money.

Building environmentally sustainable health care facilities costs more than a standard structure, but the benefits to patients and staff, as well as the long-term energy savings, make the investment well worth it.

Navigating today's opportunities for capital.

Today's lending dynamics are leading many hospitals to revisit their strategies for accessing capital: Fixed-rate bonds will likely be a centerpiece of just about any organization's capital structure going forward. Joint partnerships with physicians may provide opportunity for specific service-line strength without heavy investment in facility and equipment. Many hospitals are evaluating the sale of noncore and core assets as well as the use of ground leases or arrangements that would permit them to repurchase the assets at a later time.

Revisiting physician employment.

All too many trustees remember the last time hospitals employed large numbers of physicians--and the resulting large financial losses they absorbed. Now some hospitals are employing physicians without fearing a repeat of the mistakes from the 1990s.

Super CFO: hospital financial leaders soar to new leadership heights.

Today's healthcare CFO has become a strategic driver of his or her organization. A key focus for today's CFO is on treasury and debt management, and he or she is likely to have much greater interaction with the hospital board than CFOs did in the past. Among the factors that have pushed the CFO to the forefront are the changing healthcare reimbursement system, the emergence of hospital systems, and improvements in technology.

Can we really save 5 million lives?

Hospitals leapt at the challenge to save 100,000 lives through evidence-based medicine. Now that the goal is dramatically higher, how are hospitals responding?

Quality exponential: the journey from 100,000 to 5 million lives.

The tremendous success of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's 100,000 Lives Campaign has inspired an even more ambitious sequel. Can hospitals save 5 million lives over the next two years?

What boards need to know about regulatory issues.

EMTALA: The first in a gatefold series explaining what boards need to know about regulatory issues.

Enhancing the board's role in quality.

Four hospital systems--two in Michigan and two in California--are participating in a research project to find new ways for the board to take a more active role in quality oversight and leadership.

Defining and measuring community benefit.

Defending their tax-exempt status, not-for-profit hospitals must find tangible means to demonstrate the many ways they care for their communities.

The new political advocacy.

Campaigning for support for the bottom line is giving way to trustees' mission to demonstrate hospitals' ongoing community benefit work to legislators.

Physicians on the board: inside or outside?

Although there is little question that boards need physician trustees, where they should look for them is a matter of debate.