Innovative Cost Savings Ideas For Hospitals In 2023 | E. 60

The top healthcare cost savings strategies for 2023.

 

Episode Introduction 

As hospitals struggle with spiraling costs, Lisa Miller reveals seven key ways to save money in the next 12 months. Topics Include how ‘’flickering’’ helps to reflect on cost initiatives, the need for a Chief Expense Officer, the midterm contract reviews that helped to save one hospital over $19 million, and how data creates a 14% cost shift when presented to physicians. 

 

 

Show Topics

 

• Adopt a comprehensive approach to cost savings 
• Hospitals need a Vice-President of Costs (or equivalent) 
• Successful contract management requires a mid-term review strategy
• The benefits of zero based budgeting 
• Insource versus outsourcing
• Raising physician cost awareness
• Creating a cost-conscious culture in hospitals 

 

O1:30 Adopt a comprehensive approach to cost savings

Lisa challenged hospitals on how much insight they have into their cost savings projects.

 

‘’So what I mean by this is today, if you're a C-suite leader or you're a supply chain leader, if you wanted to know every single cost savings project that's going on in your organization, could you open up an Excel, some kind of dashboard, platform or something, and have line of sight into every single one? And my experience has said, when I've asked that question, that 100% have said, "No. We do not house every single initiative that's going on in the organization." And I think that bringing these initiatives all together so you get a complete picture with complete visibility, cohesiveness, understanding what's going on, and of course that terrible A-word which is accountability, bringing it all together, we'll have just another level of savings because you just have a complete view. And so I challenge anyone that's listening to the podcast today… I'm going to tell you that the effort to just house everything together is literally ... game changing for a lot of reasons. And I'll talk about those for a moment. But I want to give you one more nuanced thought…..Could you go back 12 months or go back in the last six months and say, "Okay, what are all the initiatives we worked on and what will be completed?.....my number one advice is to pull those projects together…. get a complete picture, invest in that time.’’

#2 Hospitals need a Vice President of Costs (or equivalent)

09:00 Lisa explained why every health system would benefit from a position that focuses on costs 

 

‘’This vice president of costs or this person who just focuses on costs where they can have line of sight to everybody and they work with everybody. …. last month, just by accident, I came across somebody, and I'm hoping that I get that person on this podcast soon…they do have a title and I've researched it since then. And there's a few of these titles out there. The title is Chief Expense Officer. I've taken an excerpt from their LinkedIn page