Jan 7 2010
Heartland
Regional Medical Center of St. Joseph, Mo. has saved
more than $3.3 million by utilizing Premier
Consulting SolutionsTM (PCS) and Premier
healthcare alliance technologies to improve quality and safety in
cardiovascular services while delivering cost-effective care.
“We must be better stewards of our resources especially since
we’re a sole provider. It’s one thing to provide quality care. It
another to provide quality care that’s cost effective and cost efficient
so patients can afford it.”
Heartland, a recipient of the 2009 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality
Award, has collaborated with experts from PCS and other Premier entities
since 2007 on a cardiovascular services project to improve care and
eliminate waste and inefficiencies with a savings goal of $4.4 million.
“When we got started there were no economic issues,” said Heartland
Cardiac, Vascular and Pulmonary Service Leader Lynette Wheeler. “When
the economic downturn hit, we didn’t have to rethink anything. It just
gave us more encouragement that we’re doing the right thing.”
“We redesigned how we did our work in the Cath Lab,” Wheeler said. “We
looked at the charge master and validated that we were capturing all
charges. We looked at surgery. We looked at supplies. Were we getting
best prices? If not, what did we need to do contractually to get to
these levels?”
The cardiovascular service line is Heartland’s largest, and all the
physicians are in practices owned by Heartland.
“You must align incentives with physicians,” Wheeler emphasized. “So one
goal was to ensure the physicians are on board with process changes. We
needed to get the hospital processes in order before we engaged the
physicians. We didn't want them coming back saying ‘If the hospital only
did this differently, we could make it work!’”
In patient care units, labor utilization was benchmarked with top
performers from across the country using Premier’s OperationsAdvisor®
labor benchmarking and productivity solution. Additionally, improvement
opportunities were identified from a number of Premier tools such as
ClinicalAdvisor®, clinical efficiency and quality performance
benchmarking; CardiacFocusTM,
cardiovascular supply chain benchmarking; and SpendAdvisorTM
MySpendTM, spend management decision support. Wheeler
continued, “We must be better stewards of our resources especially since
we’re a sole provider. It’s one thing to provide quality care. It
another to provide quality care that’s cost effective and cost efficient
so patients can afford it.”
With savings of more than $3.3 million, Heartland is well on its way to
meeting its $4.4 million goal. First-year savings were $1.5 million,
topping the $1.3 million goal. Second year validated savings are at
least $1.8 million versus a $1.5 million target. The third year will
concentrate on length of stay.
“One goal is obviously financial,” Wheeler continued, “but we are really
looking at processes and how we can change them. Our ultimate goal is to
be in the top decile for quality and the top quartile for cost. We are a
high quality organization. We want to eliminate waste and
inefficiencies.”
Heartland has participated in Premier’s Hospital
Quality Incentive Demonstration™ (HQID) value-based purchasing
project with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “We’ve done
very well in HQID. Now we’re looking at cost,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler anticipates meeting their goal. “It has been a great experience
for us and we know we’re going to make our goal. There’s no think
about it. We must be competitive. Ours is a very mobile society. If we
aren’t competitive, our patients can easily go to another provider that
is.”
Source: Heartland
Regional Medical Center