The AHA and the AMA are at odds over two provisions in a final Medicare rule that give physicians more influence over hospital decisions. The final rule, which specifies how hospitals must meet the Medicare program's Conditions of Participation, requires the following: That a hospital or healthcare system cannot have a single integrated medical staff serving more than one hospital, but that each hospital must have its own medical staff, and that every hospital's governing board include a member of that hospital's medical staff.

Dual eligibles-patients eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid-could be a good target population for a physician practice if you are ready to accommodate them. Going after this pool of patients could be good strategy, but know what you're getting into.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide at the end of June whether the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (­PPACA) is constitutional, and whether the healthcare reform law should be overturned in full or in part, or remain intact. (The decision had still not been rendered at press time.) But regardless of the outcome, many physicians and healthcare executives emphasize that the current efforts to improve care coordination and quality and reduce costs should remain the focus of the healthcare industry going forward.

Two years after the debut of the iPad®, the devices are making inroads in all aspects of society, and healthcare is no exception. Tablets and other larger-screen devices are often able to fit into the IT picture with relatively little work. Those who are benefiting now had a virtual desktop strategy already in place.

It will take longer for vendors and healthcare IT leaders to truly leverage the power and ease of use of these devices, and for now there may be a bit of cat-and-mouse game. Rogue innovator-clinicians are being tempted by an ever-increasing number of cloud and device apps available over the Web outside traditional IT approval, while network managers rely on increasingly clever network application monitoring tools to identify protected health information being inappropriately captured, analyzed, and transmitted by these new apps.

The lingering effects of the economic recession and a modest growth in personal income are expected to continue to constrain healthcare spending through 2013. But look for a jump in spending as more provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) are enacted. U.S. spending on healthcare is expected to increase by an average of only 4% between 2011 and 2013, which is slightly ahead of the historically low 3.8% experienced in 2009. Total national health expenditures for 2013 are estimated at $2.9 trillion.