Join hospitals in working toward a common reimbursement goal.

In light of growing public concern about rising health care costs, government is seeking ways to reduce expenditures while maintaining the accessibility and quality of health care for Americans. Prospective payment and competition are two proposed mechanisms for achieving reduced costs; both impact on hospitals and pathologists. Hospitals and pathologists share a number of common interests including the same market, patients, physicians as colleagues, and the desire to provide quality care and have less government intervention. They clearly must work together to assure the survival of the health care system as it is today. This article, first presented at the American Pathology Foundation last year, describes, from a hospital administrator's perspective, an experimental reimbursement system used in New Jersey.