Centralized Project Tracking Helps to Achieve $26.9M in Savings

May 26, 2020

problem

Tracking, Communication and Accountability

Almost all healthcare systems are trying to achieve significant reductions in the cost of care. They often have 50+ initiatives underway simultaneously with the goal of reducing cost without sacrificing quality, patient satisfaction, non-employee satisfaction, and retention. Care variation, productivity, supply cost… the list goes on and on. The old adage is true: if you don’t measure it, you won’t achieve it. 

For health systems that are goal-oriented, countless hours often go into tracking of initiatives. Getting the data, analyzing it, and calculating financial impact is often spread among teams. This leads to “savings” being reported, but no savings show up in financial statements. Moreover, getting a view of all savings projects across the organization is either impossible or so labor-intensive that it is not done. The result: savings programs don’t produce, goals are not met, and more budget cuts are inevitable.

play

Centralize Tracking of All Projects Against Your Financial Source of Truth 

When a top children’s hospital and research center decided to implement Strata Decision Technology’s Continuous Improvement (CI) module, they wanted to empower teams with financial data and analytics tools that would simplify and centralize identification, quantification, and tracking of cost savings opportunities. 

In partnership with Strata, the organization moved to centralize tracking and reduced manual, Excel-based tracking. Leveraging Continuous Improvement, they tracked results for over 200 initiatives automatically. They could then report the impact of projects at service line, hospital and health system levels–and see the dollars on the bottom line. 

The organization strengthened their internal governance structure and used CI to inform the project team meetings and the steering committee. They established regular cadence to review results vs. targets, gaps, and corrective action plans. 

impact

Realization of Cost Savings through Tracking & Accountability

Through the implementation of CI, this organization shifted their culture to be accountable for results. Their team of 40+ improvement resources were now doing more and driving greater impact. This year, the organization has realized $26.9 million toward its three year $120 million target.