Leavitt Partners has created FuturePanel, a group of healthcare thought leaders to inform, refine and guide the healthcare intelligence shared by the Salt Lake City-based firm.

The results are in from the 2012 CMIO Compensation Survey. Were bringing you several articles with more facts and figures from this year's results. First up: CMIOs who work at a multi-hospital organization/integrated delivery network.

Our third annual CMIO Compensation Survey offers some interesting insights on the job and the people serving in the role. Several CMIOs share their thoughts on the numbers, including the shift to younger CMIOs, less satisfaction with salaries and more CMIOs looking for a new job.

HealthGrades has released a list of Americas Top Cities for Hospital Care, with Baltimore, Phoenix/Prescott, Ariz., and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, ranking as the sequential top three. The rankings are based on a study of patient death and complication rates at nearly 5,000 U.S. hospitals.

Often healthcare services in the U.S. are overutilized, which can lead to high healthcare spending. Expanding guidelines and establishing appropriate use criteria for more healthcare services could help eliminate this overuse and in turn reduce high healthcare spending, according to an editorial published in the Jan. 24 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Market competition had only a modest effect on hospital performance for heart failure (HF) care, according to a study in the December issue of the American Journal of Managed Care, prompting the authors to recommend other tools for fostering hospital quality improvement efforts.

Radiology departments must define and monitor their safety metrics to measure departmental performance, identify problem areas and track improvement, while also fostering a supportive department culture, according to an article published in the February issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.

The Government Accountability Office suggested that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should address the performance of the National Quality Forum, a Washington, D.C-based nonprofit organization contracted by the HHS to retool existing and develop new quality measures for use in the EHR incentive programs.