Capital management helps hospitals face hard times

Financial officers of healthcare organizations in severe financial distress must map out an effective capital management strategy to help their institutions avoid disaster. An executive's plan of action should include streamlining and restructuring the organization, studying long- and short-term assets to improve cash flow, and investigating ways to refinance debt. Healthcare organizations must develop warning signals for impending financial difficulties and contingency plans that address operating and capital responses to such a crisis. Learning to guide an organization through financial difficulties may be an executive's most important financial skill in the decade to come.