The Business of Surgery

How Big Data In The OR Saved One Health System Nearly $10 Million Last Year

Big data has been a buzzword in the healthcare industry for the past few years, but more often than not, the benefits of big data have been hard to quantify. Not so for St. Louis, Missouri-based Mercy health system.  Mercy has recently turned big data findings in the perioperative area of their hospitals into savings […]

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Why Case Mix Index Matters To Your Hospital And How To Maximize It

In talking with our hospital customers, case mix index (CMI) often comes up as a source of confusion and misunderstanding by clinical staff.  CMI is widely tracked by employees on the financial side of the hospital, but not monitored nearly as closely on the clinical side, so its impact is widely misunderstood.  CMI is an

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Medical Groups Come Out In Support Of The Importance Of Scientific Evidence

Recently, dozens of societies representing different members of the medical community joined together to support the appreciation of scientific evidence, education and investment.  Groups as varied as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association and the Association of American Cancer Institutes joined the cause to fight what they feel is an onslaught of

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Why You Need To Focus On Data Quality In Your Electronic Medical Record Today

Data integrity is becoming a focal point of many hospitals that have recently gone live with their multi-million dollar electronic medical record (EMR) systems.  While moving from paper to electronic medical records helps hospitals improve EMR accessibility and portability, it does not do much in the way of removing human error.  This becomes a potential

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Leverage Your Electronic Medical Record Investment – You Only Spent Billions

You’ve seen the reports of larger healthcare systems and their investments into Electronic Medical Records (“EMR”). Most are spending hundreds of millions of dollars, and many are spending over a billion dollars!  This includes the actual software modules of the EMR, vendor labor-hours spent implementing the project, consultants, your hospital IT budget, servers, and so

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3 Dangers of Expired Medical Devices

A recent survey conducted by Cardinal Health showed that 24% of hospital staff have seen or heard of an expired product being used on a patient during a procedure.  This comes as no surprise, as we have witnessed the usage of expired inventory at hospitals first-hand.  Without the proper processes and vigilance to prevent these

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The Cost of Hospital Waste

Each year, the US healthcare system wastes $765 billion according to a 2012 National Academy of Medicine study. According to the same study, that total eclipses the annual budget of the Defense Department and the amount could be used to cover the insurance coverage of 150 million American workers. While the numbers are staggering, there

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Using Surgeon Scorecards To Drive Down Costs In the OR

Recent studies have shown a strong link between sharing pricing data with physicians and a resulting drop in case costs.  The latest study to show this link was recently published in March 2017 in JAMA.  According to JAMA, the OR Surgical Cost Reduction (OR SCORE) project was conducted in a single health system with multiple

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How to Get More Value Out of Your EHR Implementation

Many US hospitals are now reaching the end of their electronic health records roll-outs.  Companies such as Epic and Cerner have reaped large windfalls from these implementations at most hospitals across the country.  While the software companies have benefited greatly from the implementations, many hospitals are left scratching their heads about how best to take

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Survey Reveals Top Priorities for Healthcare Supply Chain Leaders

Recently, Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX) released its top priorities for healthcare supply chains in 2017.  The priorities were the result of a survey of 50 leading supply chain provider organizations.  At the top of the list was predictive analytics, with improved price accuracy between supplier and provider partners and standardized business processes/data across the organization

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