Steven Berger, FHFMA

This month marks the 50th anniversary of my start in the healthcare industry. In August 1975, I began a job with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Greater New York (now known as Empire Healthcare Services) as a Medicare cost report auditor, a position that impacted the final Medicare reimbursements for every hospital across the…

June 2025, and another Annual Conference is being held, this year in Denver. It started in 1949 at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, with the Hospital Accounting Clinic and Workshop. Then, over the years, as it gradually expanded, it found a home in new distinguished settings, including the University of Chicago, Ohio State University and…

Over the years, the role of hospital CFOs has expanded profoundly. Back in 1946, when the HFMA was born as the American Association of Hospital Accountants, the highest titles for healthcare finance leaders were comptroller, controller or business manager.a Not so anymore. New titles have emerged with the increasing complexity of the finance function as…

Gordon Edwards, CFO of Akron Children’s Hospital, has a credo he lives by: “We improve the health of kids.” It’s a credo that reflects his belief that children’s hospitals are among the most rewarding places to work in healthcare. “Children’s hospitals are just happier places, because everyone is dedicated to providing children with the opportunity…

Jana Cook, CFO of Phelps Health in Rolla, MO, has successfully managed the challenges of rural hospital operations, including staffing shortages, lack of negotiating power, and difficulty in recruiting clinical providers, to maintain financial viability and grow the organization during the pandemic.

Julie Lautt, CFO of Avera Health, has successfully led her team in achieving ambitious goals, overcoming challenges such as healthcare finance policies and the COVID-19 pandemic, and emphasizing the importance of teams and innovation in promoting cost-effectiveness in healthcare.

Strategies evolve. Operations evolve. Leadership concepts evolve. That’s the circle of life in the healthcare industry. Ongoing changes can affect what healthcare leaders focus on from one year to the next. That idea might well be encapsulated in the differences between what the CFOs featured in this column in FY2022-23 cited as their suggested guiding…

Having a diverse background in finance, with time spent working outside of healthcare, can give a healthcare CFO a unique perspective that is uncommon for the position. Such experience describes the journey of Lisa Montman, CPA, senior vice president and CFO at HonorHealth, a six-hospital, 1,372-bed, not-for-profit health system headquartered in Scottsdale, Ariz. Montman’s career…

Bookended by her first job at the CPA firm Arthur Andersen and her current job, 30+ years later, just down the road at SSM Health, Brenda Chilman has had a strong and far-flung career in healthcare finance. Her journey — which has taken her from St. Louis to Denver to Baltimore and, full circle, back…

What can modern hospital or health system CFOs do to keep their organizations on a stable financial footing in the financially fraught post-COVID-19 era? In answering this question, most CFOs will begin by telling horror stories and tales of woe involving revenue squeezes and expense proliferations. Pressures come from everywhere, including:  It’s tough being a…