Health systems can achieve significant returns on investment by prioritizing quality and patient safety, according to a June 2 report from the National Association for Healthcare Quality.
The report is among the first to quantify financial return on investing in quality and safety, refuting the assertion that these priorities must come at the expense of cutting costs, NAHQ said.
The report includes real-world results from five of 14 health systems participating in NAHQ’s Workforce Accelerator initiative, including:
- Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, Calif.)
- Christus Health (Irving, Texas)
- Veterans Health Administration (Washington, D.C.)
- Brown University Health (Providence, R.I.)
- Columbus (Ind.) Regional Health
Through the initiative, systems deploy NAHQ’s Healthcare Quality Competency Framework to assess quality structures, upskill teams and reduce variability across its workforce.
Below are seven figures to know from the report, based on initial results from Christus Health, Kaiser Permanente and Brown University Health (formerly Lifespan).
1. Christus Health
Since adopting the quality framework three years ago, Christus Health has:
- Avoided $3 million in costs related to harm metrics
- Gained more than $15 million annually from pay-for-performance incentive programs
- Reported a return more than 20 times its annual investment
2. Kaiser Permanente Northern California
Now in its third year of program implementation, with more than 170 staff members standardizing quality work across the market, Kaiser has achieved:
- A 194% improvement in cost avoidance from quality work over the past two years
- More than $6.5 million in savings from quality improvements
- A 92% reduction in Hospital-Acquired Condition Reduction Program penalties
3. Brown University Health
The health system has rolled out standardized safety and quality training to more than 10,000 team members as part of the Workforce Accelerator. Since 2022, it has reduced HAC penalties by $3.2 million.
“NAHQ Workforce Accelerator results prove the program can level up performance of quality
and safety teams, and elevating that performance significantly reduces harm and serious safety events, improves culture and save[s] millions of dollars,” James Merlino, MD, executive vice president and chief innovation officer at The Joint Commission, said in the report. “This is gold.”
View the full report here.
