In the U.S., one healthcare issue that dominates headlines, surveys and reports is the exorbitant cost of care. Many organizations haven’t successfully lowered costs because they don’t understand the true cost of care, which is critical to grasp in a value-based world. “What you don’t know, you can’t solve,” according to Tushar Pandey, vice president of decision support for Strata Decision Technology. However, only 10 percent of U.S. healthcare systems have adopted advanced cost accounting tools to address this knowledge gap, according to Mr. Pandey.

The rapidly changing healthcare delivery system and dwindling margins can make the future can look bleak—especially to organizations with eight or nine figure cost reduction targets, which unfortunately, have become the norm.