Leading Health Systems Save $7 Million, Improve Care Reliability

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Advisory Board Company announced today two case studies where health systems improved clinical quality and consistency while reducing unnecessary costs and enhancing the patient experience. 

These initiatives, conducted through The Advisory Board Company's Crimson physician performance analytics program, produced more than $6.9 million in aggregate savings for Saint Alphonsus Health System's Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center (Boise, Idaho) and Baptist Health's Baptist Health Physician Partners (Little Rock, Arkansas). 

Given the changing health care landscape, hospitals and health systems are seeking to become the provider of choice for consumers, insurers, and employers.  To meet that objective, systems aim to reduce care variation, improve clinical outcomes and reduce unnecessary costs across the entire health system. 

"Increasingly, consumers and other health care payers are looking for high-performance networks that reliably deliver the best care value across all their physicians and settings," said Nicole Latimer, Senior Vice President, Performance Technologies at The Advisory Board Company.  "Both of these case studies show an institution taking a fundamental step in health system growth strategy by improving the most important aspect of the patient experience, clinical outcomes.  Cutting unnecessary costs of care also helps health systems avoid becoming a higher-cost provider when competing for inclusion in payers' care networks." 

Increasing Clinical Performance Reliability

The two case studies address these imperatives, including using Crimson to identify opportunities to improve care efficiency and effectiveness.  

• Total Joint Replacements: Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center saved $5.4 million and almost 500 days in length of stay (LOS) in major joint replacements from 2011-14. Saint Alphonsus used Crimson to identify opportunities to improve care for total joint replacement patients and subsequently leveraged Crimson data to work with physicians to reduce readmissions from 2.89% to 1.69% while also decreasing cost per case by 12% and average length of stay by 15%.

• Diabetes Management: Baptist Health Physician Partners (BHPP) saved $1.5 million by decreasing high-cost acute-care utilizations by 14% and avoidable diabetes admissions by 30%. The reductions were effective in targeting unnecessary care, as Baptist Health cut its readmission rate by 14 percentage points. BHPP used Crimson to identify unnecessary ED utilization, find the top causes of avoidable inpatient admissions, and inform the expansion of its primary care network based on geographic concentration of patients.

If adopted by other hospitals and health systems, these initiatives could have a tremendous impact on U.S. health care. A nationwide 30% reduction in avoidable acute care admissions for diabetes would give patients nationwide $227 million in savings of out-of-pocket costs for co-pays, co-insurance, and other non-covered costs for diabetes-driven hospital admissions.

Today, more than 1,000 individual hospitals use Crimson performance technologies to achieve reduced care variation, manage 10 million patient lives, attract patients and physician referrals, and improve medical group performance. 

About The Advisory Board Company
The Advisory Board Company is the leading provider of insight-driven technology, research, and services for organizations in transforming industries. Through its innovative membership model, the Company collaborates with more than 230,000 leaders at 5,200 member organizations to elevate performance and solve their most pressing problems. The Company provides strategic guidance, actionable insights, cloud-based software solutions, and comprehensive implementation and management services. For more information, visit www.advisory.com.

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