Hospital trends mark changes in employment, admission patterns

Meanwhile, in Oregon, hospital profit margins were down in 2010, according to the state Association of Hospitals and Health Systems.

Dallas Morning News: Doctors More Apt To Join Hospitals Than Private Practices, Survey Says
The majority of job openings for physicians today feature hospital employment, while private-practice openings are fewer and farther between, according to a survey released Friday (Roberson, 6/10).

Houston Chronicle: Bounty Of Beds Bad News For Area Hospitals
Dr. P. Clay Haas and a nurse, Bernarvy Beverly, pass through the cardiac catheterization lab recovery area at Northwest Memorial Hermann Hospital. Procedures in the lab are often done on an outpatient basis, and that wasn't the case a decade ago. Leaders of the city's largest private and public hospital systems say Houston has too many hospital beds. Despite the rise in population, there's a drop in the number of people using hospital beds and the length of the time they spend in them, said Dan Wolterman, CEO of the nonprofit Memorial Hermann Healthcare System (Patel, 6/10).

The Lund Report: Hospital Profit Margins Slightly Down in 2010
Oregon hospitals finished the year 2010 with a slightly lower profit margin than in 2009 due to increased uncompensated care and further shortfalls in Medicare and Medicaid, according to Kevin Earls, senior vice president of the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems. ... Last year, hospitals gave out around $1.2 billion in uncompensated care, about $1 billion more than in 2000, said Earls. This figure, however, represents full-billed unpaid charges and bad debt, and not actual costs (Lund, 6/10).