While uncertainty is ubiquitous in the business world, nowhere is it more pronounced than in healthcare operations, in providing for effective and efficient care in response to patient demands.  We focus on two sources of this uncertainty, variation in the complexity of care demanded because of the patient mix and variation in the volume of care demanded by the patient population.  Using an interdisciplinary perspective that combines organizational information processing theory with an operations framework that addresses known and unknown unknowns, we conceptualize the drivers of uncertainty and their impact on two important healthcare outcomes, length of stay and number of procedures.  We then pose the question that if uncertainty is a given and has a detrimental effect on outcomes, how do hospitals cope with it? What might be some operations-based mechanisms for mitigating uncertainty? Building on theory, we hypothesize and empirically examine the mitigational impacts of the operational concepts of related focus and utilization levels. Using a large dataset of 830,853 patient discharges in 26 clinical departments across 731 hospitals in five U.S. Midwest states, our results indicate that mix uncertainty and volume uncertainty each have a significant impact on patient care (number of procedures, length of stay). We also find that operational decisions related to focus in relevant categories and department utilization levels play a key mitigating effect in addressing uncertainty in healthcare settings. We discuss key research and managerial implications of our study findings.