Hospitals, health systems select Service Line Analytics solution from MedAssets

To improve margins and increase efficiency ahead of healthcare reform implications, more than 100 hospitals and health systems have signed up to use MedAssets' (NASDAQ: MDAS) Service Line Analytics. Launched in October 2009, the online solution identifies sustainable financial improvement opportunities across all service lines by connecting supply costs with both clinical outcomes and patient encounters.

“Service Line Analytics is unique in that it helps us implement operational improvements immediately. We analyze our data, compare it against ourselves and present it to the decision makers whether it be administrative, clinical director or physician”

Service Line Analytics is being used by leading healthcare providers to clearly identify and manage clinical and supply expenses through actionable data and analytics, without impacting the quality of patient care. With Service Line Analytics, hospitals and health systems use a Web-based solution to access actionable data and business intelligence, coupled with leading change management consulting and strategies that engage physicians and clinicians as a key part of the cost-reduction process. The solution links reimbursement, supply cost, supply utilization, clinical factors and other resource utilization data by physician and MS-DRG, allowing providers to gain visibility in how variations in utilization by patient mix affect overall cost. Opportunity areas include service line expense, medical, surgical and implant supply price, utilization of those supplies, pharmacy utilization, physician preference item (PPI) pricing and length of stay (LOS) supply usage.

"Service Line Analytics is unique in that it helps us implement operational improvements immediately. We analyze our data, compare it against ourselves and present it to the decision makers whether it be administrative, clinical director or physician," said Brent Petty, system director of supply chain, Wellmont Health System, which implemented Service Line Analytics in late 2009. "We can truly take real-time data and make decisions based on our own data, not just industry averages. It's not a cookie cutter approach. We can actually manage our own data, our own processes and our own people."

"Service Line Analytics has proven itself to be a key part of a provider's cost-reduction strategy in less than one year on the market," said Dan Piro, president, Aspen Healthcare Metrics, a MedAssets company. "Healthcare reform will require hospitals and health systems to identify opportunities to bend the cost curve in a positive direction. Through Service Line Analytics, healthcare providers have access to powerful, relevant data, which provides insight into how they practice. It helps them identify opportunities to engage physicians in the cost-reduction process and uses valid data to drive collaborative decision making."

MedAssets' sales and product experts will be available to demonstrate the capabilities of the Service Line Analytics solution at the 2010 AHRMM conference in booth #701.