Weekly News Roundup: October 11, 2019
Activity-Based Costing in Healthcare
Health systems are facing increasing pressure to deliver cost savings. To build sustainability, healthcare organizations must identify waste and reduce the total cost of care. In this week’s news roundup: how activity-based costing is healthcare’s secret to doing more with less; why more hospitals are calculating actual cost of care; and more.
Activity-Based Costing: Healthcare’s Secret to Doing More With Less
With the true cost of care at their fingertips, healthcare leaders can identify at-risk populations earlier–such as pregnant women diagnosed with gestational diabetes mellitus–and more quickly implement effective interventions (e.g., more scrupulous monitoring and earlier screenings). Health systems that leverage the actionable insight from ABC further benefit by implementing the same, or similar, process/clinical improvement measures across other service lines.
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More Hospitals Calculating Actual Cost of Care
Every month, UPMC’s top brass gathers to study three very important green, red, and blue squiggly lines that bounce up and down and up again across the length of several charts. The lines represent the academic health system’s “cost per” unit in key areas. Read More
Activity-Based Costing in Healthcare Saves Millions
“How do we justify not having the same scientific approach to the delivery of healthcare that we have in manufacturing? Especially when the stakes are so much higher? This is the health of our parents, children, spouses, and friends that we are talking about here.” Read More
How Healthcare Cost-Per-Case Improvements Deliver Big Bottom-Line Savings
Studies show that the best cost reduction strategies start with clinical improvements. In particular, health systems should begin by looking at ways to reduce clinical variation. Doing so can help them identify the biggest opportunities for, not only cost savings, but also improving care. If a health system is just getting started with cost saving and quality improvement efforts, it’s important to identify the best areas of opportunity, but it may be more important for long-term success to start small, on a per-case basis. Read More
