Our group does a few things to mitigate this issue:
1) We rotate our PCs around. In yesterday's game, we had 3 roleplaying sessions, 1 skill challenge, and 3 combat encounters. In the 3 combat encounters, the 5th level PC Wizard used up 1 healing surge out of 8 (15 Con) in the first 2 encounters. So, we put her up front in the third encounter and put our defender/striker in the rear. This was a particularly nasty encounter with minions doing 12 points of damage if they hit and also getting a free standard action when they died (which they used to charge), so she ended up using 3 healing surges. She now has 4 healing surges out of 8. On the other hand, the one striker and the striker/defender both now have 6 out of 9 due to not getting attacked as often in that encounter. Usually, they average using up 1.5 to 2 surges per encounter (typically having about 4 healing surges remaining after 3 encounters), they are currently averaging 1 surge used per encounter. It's a way to shift the Controller's (and the Leader's) healing surges to the other 3 PCs who end up taking the brunt of the attacks during the day.
2) Another thing that I do with my PC is that I often don't heal him up all of the way during a short rest if that will waste hit points. In the first encounter in yesterday's game, he was down 16 hit points. A short rest healing surge would have given him more than that but I didn't want to waste the additional hit points. In the second encounter, he got hit multiple times and got healed twice for the exact same amount of damage that he had taken, so he again ended up the encounter being 16 hit points down. Again, I did not heal him up. In the third encounter, he got hit once and a single short rest heal got him up all of the way. If I would have healed him in the first encounter, he would have used 1 healing surge in the first, 2 in the second, and 1 in the third instead of 2 in the second and 1 in the third.
This saved him one healing surge in three encounters.
Granted, this technique is a bit risky and can backfire on the player and the team overall, but I've used it quite often to good effect. It typically saves about one healing surge out of every 4 encounters (in this case, it saved 1 in 3, but that's a bit unusual).
Not all of the players in our group do this which means that we sometimes end up holing up for the day an encounter earlier than we really need to, but some players can be a bit self conscious and unwilling to be risky if their PC is not at full hit points every encounter.
3) Another thing that we do in our game is focus fire. Most players in most game do this, but there are some techniques that make it especially helpful to healing surges. We have 2 melee strikers and 1 ranged striker/defender in our group. So, both melee strikers attack the same NPC nearly every round until dead. The ranged striker, the leader, and the controller also tend to target at range the same foe as the two strikers. The controller and the ranged striker/defender also have a few ways to immobilize a few foes per encounter. So what we do is immobilize a few (hopefully strong melee) foes as early as possible. One foe then typically falls to the combined party might in round one. Instead of 5 enemies attacking the PCs in round one, it's typically only 3 or 4. In round two, it's usually a maximum of 4. So by taking out at least one foe per round, by staying spread out so that the enemies cannot get more than 2 PCs in an area attack at a time, and by preventing some of the NPCs from either attacking at all, or attacking with sometimes weaker ranged attacks, it can minimize the amount of damage that the PCs take overall. Stunned is better than immobilized, but we aren't yet at the levels to acquire that.
4) One other thing that the players can do is to not heal a heavily wounded PC, especially one with ranged attacks. If the PC goes unconscious at -10 hit points and is subsequently healed for 20 hit points, the PC has effectively gotten 30 points of healing for a 20 hit point heal. This only works if the Leader's turn occurs after the attacking foe hits and before the downed PC's turn comes up.
This is not something that most players are willing to do due to both the risk and the fact that it feels a bit like gaming the system. But, it is effective in squeezing out a few additional hit points of healing.
5) Some DMs do not allow multiple short rests with multiple healing powers used those rests, instead wanting the PCs to use multiplle healing surges up without bonuses to them. Talk your DM out of this extremely bad idea. The game is meant to be fun, not to be a way to suck down party resources out of combat.
Last year's upping of monster damage by WotC did lower the number of encounters that our groups can do from about 8 max per day to about 5 to 6 max per day. On the other hand, our group has been trying to get more efficient at group tactics and at power/feat selection.
I am playing in a PBP game where some of the players tend to work on their own more. I've seen situations where doing this results in lopsided resource usage and it doesn't work nearly as well (e.g. our PBP group has 2 Leaders with 6 total PCs and in our most recent encounter, one PC has been healed 3 times in 3 rounds (he's used up 3 surges, he'll probably use up 5 or 6 surges total in this encounter); teamwork by all team members and good tactics makes a fairly significant difference in healing surge usage).
