WIHI: Clinicians and Financial Staff Can Improve Quality and Lower Costs, Part 2

Date: February 21, 2013

Featuring:

• Norman E. Dascher, Jr., FACHE, CEO of Acute Care – Troy and Vice President, St. Peter’s Health Partners, Northeast Health (Troy, New York)
• Lucy A. Savitz, PhD, MBA, Senior Scientist, Institute for Healthcare Delivery Research, Intermountain Healthcare
• Katharine Luther, RN, MPM, Vice President, Hospital Portfolio Planning and Administration, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)
• Catherine Abbott, RN, MSN, Administrator, Performance Improvement, Hackensack University Medical Center (Hackensack, New Jersey)

 

Here’s the rub about reducing health care costs to improve your hospital’s bottom line: The “old” solutions of cutting back on staff and services are shortsighted at best. The best solutions require delivering better care and getting rid of wasteful practices. Even getting bigger to achieve efficiencies and economies of scale won’t help in the long run; the new world pays for value over volume. And value involves care coordination that follows patients wherever they go, including after they leave your hospital.

How to survive, and thrive, in this brave new world? This WIHI is the second installment of a focus this month on cost reduction strategies that marry the best ideas from quality improvement with sharpened-pencil, financial and business acumen. The discussion focuses on the work of two organizations — Northeast Health and Hackensack University Medical Center — and unpack how they, and some 58 other organizations that were part of IHI’s Impacting Cost + Quality initiative, are on track to save $43 million.

Can your hospital leadership commit to reducing costs at least two percent over the next five years, while maintaining or improving quality? If you can’t make that commitment today, what would get you on the path to making it? WIHI host Madge Kaplan, with the help of IHI’s Kathy Luther and three dynamic hospital leaders and experts — Norm Dascher, Lucy Savitz, and Cathy Abbott — promise you a bold and bottom-line discussion.

The following materials may also be of interest:

• Leaders challenged to reduce cost, deliver more. Healthcare Executive. Jan/Feb2012
• Eliminating Waste Without Hurting Quality. HFMA Leadership Magazine, May 2012
• IHI Innovation white paper series: Hospital Inpatient Waste Identification Tool
• IHI Innovation white paper series: Increasing Efficiency and Enhancing Value in Health Care