LAS VEGAS--At yesterday's Healthcare Financial Management Association ANI conference, Joel Hoff, senior vice president of administrative services at Sisters of St. Francis Health Services Inc. and Hazel Seabrook, managing director of Wellspring+Stockamp, part of Huron Healthcare, shared how they were able to reap more than $44 million in saved non-labor costs for the multiregional Catholic health system with 13 hospitals. (The system has annual non-labor expenses of nearly $500 million.)
The key to finding costs that can be weeded out? "Ask why, why, why like a 3-year-old," advised Hoff. Specifically, the steps needed to create a viable, sustainable cost-cutting process at multiple facilities include the following, according to Hoff and Seabrook:
- Obtain leadership engagement at each facility.
- Engage facility leadership to understand the "system" view.
- Look for opportunities both on a system basis and at individual facilities. Sisters of St. Francis found that many hospitals had "one-off agreements that didn't maximize benefits for the system," said Hoff.
- Mine the knowledge of frontline workers to find out why things are being done a certain way and whether that way is still relevant.
- Develop a sustainable, collaborative team culture.
- Define metrics for assessment and ongoing measurement so that the actual savings can be determined.
- Standardize tools and methods.
To learn more:
- visit the conference website