CEO Chris Van Gorder and the leadership team at Scripps Health is working to eliminate waste and standardize care to lower costs and deliver the best value to patients. Here are four changes the system made that helped generate savings of $150 million in the first year, according to the report:
• Ending a requirement to use nitric oxide for cardiac valve and coronary artery bypass graft procedures. Scripps found a $6,000 difference in cost for cardiac valve and coronary artery bypass graft procedures between two of its hospitals. One hospital required the use of nitric oxide for patients, but had the same outcomes as the other hospital. By eliminating the requirement to use nitric oxide, the system saved $400,000 per year.
• Establishing a new emergency department intake procedure. Before instituting a new ED intake procedure, the ED wait time could reach eight hours. Now, ED physicians and nurses evaluate patients together and early, reducing the amount of handoffs. The resulting decrease in errors and increase in patient throughput has generated $29 million in extra revenue.
• Standardizing contrast agents. Scripps hospitals standardized contrast agents for radiology tests, enabling the system to leverage volume and gain discounts that saved $1.5 million a year.
• Eliminating variation. At one hospital, eliminating variation in cardiac surgeons’ processes and establishing voluntary best practices decreased length of stay by nearly a day, yielding $3.6 million in savings a year.
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