Healthcare
Improving Healthcare Business Outcomes
Professionals in every industry have at one time or another lamented the need to do more with less; few have seen challenges comparable to those faced by today’s health care leaders. In an environment filled with technological, regulatory and administrative change, hospitals and practices must serve significantly more patients while accepting lower reimbursement for many services. It is a “business” model that would not work for most businesses.
As Orion’s work hospitals and medical practices over the last 25 years has proven, healthcare providers can reduce unnecessary costs and generate increased revenue via the intelligent application of data analytics and lean process improvement. To help you achieve these outcomes without compromising patient services, Orion has created the Treating the Business of Healthcare seminar series. The skills taught in these seminars can help you achieve real-world results like the examples below.
Data Analytics and Process Improvement in Action
Success Story #1: MRI Wait Time and Capacity
The MRI unit at a major Children’s hospital found themselves in a situation where the numbers just didn’t add up. The main OR had three MRI machines that were running at an average monthly capacity of 58%, and yet there was a six week backlog to get scheduled for an image. There were many talented people in each of the relevant functions but a flawed process was leading to poor machine utilization and delays in patient care. Using simple Lean and Data Analytics techniques a project team generated a range of common sense solutions that impacted patient flow, scheduling, and cross functional communication. The double digit increase in capacity resulted in an annual gain of more than $2 million. The six-week patient backlog was slashed to one week. First case on-time start % has doubled.
Success Story #2: OR Block Utilization
In 2012, operating room block utilization in a local hospital had bottomed out at 54%, and there was confusion between the hospital and physicians over block allocation. A manual data entry and evaluation system hampered the ability to track performance and make good management decisions. Leveraging a collaborative hospital-physician partnership and newly acquired data analytics capability, a hospital team was able to remove more over 400 hours per month of non-productive block time from the schedule and evaluate adding more than $7 million in new surgeons/specialties to fill the newly-creates space. Given the expense of running an OR, both the cost savings and revenue enhancement opportunities are dramatic.