Lowering healthcare costs begins by understanding the actual cost of delivering care. This is particularly difficult for Surgery Departments, where variations in physician preference items (PPIs), poor availability of low-cost, high-efficacy alternatives for implants and other surgical needs, and evolving surgical techniques complicate the calculation and management of costs.
Benchmarking is “comparing one’s business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies’." It’s a time-honored practice and adds value by indicating how you stack up against your peers and competitors. Benchmarking can tell you if similar processes take your organization longer or use more resources. Do patients wait longer at your facility than at similar facilities? How do your costs compare?
The challenges faced by hospitals and health systems on multiple fronts are significant and well documented. The business environment is exceedingly demanding for management teams as they reposition their organizations for strategic growth, competitive differentiation, and sustained financial health.
Hospital and health system executives recognize the imperative to transform their organization’s costs as they transition to value-based payment models, strive to remain competitive, and seek to generate capital to fund strategic growth initiatives. Many organizations have an opportunity to address a difficult-but-essential element of cost transformation: reducing inappropriate clinical variation.
