Financial Operations Track
Focusing on the fiscal health of your organization while meeting the demands for superior patient care remains a challenge. With new financial models, changes in the way payments are being made, and stringent goals for reducing expenditures, financial decision makers face numerous critical decisions every day. Designed to target executives with direct responsibilities for financial management, contract negotiation and product pricing decisions, the sessions in this track will help you develop and implement financial strategies that will have a positive impact on both patient experience and the bottom line.
1:00 pm – 2:15 pm Panel: Benchmarking Purchased Services: Cost Reduction in Clinical Care
Moderator: Mike Langlois, Healthcare Supply Chain Resource, Langlois & Associates, LLC
Panelists: Sherry Cochran-Johnson, Manager, Strategic Sourcing, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta; Terry Cox, Director, Supply Chain
Services, Yuma Regional Medical Center; and Donna Fahy, Purchased Services Director, Cape Fear Valley Health System
As hospitals face mounting pressure to reduce costs and streamline processes, purchased services are often targeted as an area for improvement. Purchased services contracting incorporates the more traditionally outsourced areas such as food service, housekeeping and facilities maintenance, but also encompasses many areas in clinical services, such as dialysis, physical therapy and pharmacy. Only 5% to 10% of purchased services are formally sourced through the supply chain, making them difficult to analyze, categorize and track with metrics that provide visibility into line-item spend.
Having accurate benchmarks can help identify outliers and bring suppliers in line with budget. IDNs should compile contract and accounts payable data from across the organization to create a dashboard that shows total spend, amount by category, numbers of vendors managed in each area and amount of spend per vendor. Advanced analytics technology can offer health systems continuously updated spending performance of hundreds of hospitals and health systems for timely and reliable comparisons. Once this intelligence is available, organizations can quickly identify waste and prioritize the work plan to maximize the savings impact.
Learning Objectives:
- Formulate your IDN’s state of play in clinical outsourced services – how many vendors and products are found in categories within the system.
- Compare and contrast analytics and benchmarking platforms to help compile a picture of your purchased services performance.
- Identify what a clear decision-making process on purchased services looks like.
- Evaluate methods of streamlining vendors and services across the system.
2:30 pm – 3:45 pm Episode-based Reimbursement and the Supply Chain
Moderator: Gloria Graham, DNP, RN, Clinical Materials Specialist, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
Presenters: Karla Barber, System Director of Clinical Value Analytics, Centura Health and Winifred Hayes, CEO, Hayes, Inc.
Bundled payment is a strategy used by Medicare and private payers to reduce costs and improve outcomes through a shared payment among providers surrounding an episode of care. The arrangements allow providers to share in the bonus payments that hospitals receive (as well as the penalties) if they succeed in keeping spending per episode below the target price. To date only the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement Model became mandatory in April 2016. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has delayed implementation of projects around acute myocardial infarction, coronary artery bypass graft and hip/femur fractures indefinitely, but private sector initiatives abound.
For the supply chain, bundles mandate that medical devices, drugs and other elements of a care process are cost-effective. Variation in product is counterproductive, so the need for value analysis and contracting is critical. New governance structures are arising to monitor bundled payment arrangements across systems.
Learning Objectives:
1. Outline best practices for lowering the price of components of bundled payments.
2. Explain what practices may be employed to make value analysis more effective in the era of value-based payments .
3. Describe the structure of bundled payment projects and how supply chain gains a seat at the table.
4:00 pm – 5:15 pm Shouldn’t Supply Chain and Revenue Cycle Get Together?
Moderator: Mike Neely, Principal, Perimeter Solutions Group
Presenters: Rex Fieck, Chief Supply Chain Strategy Officer, Nick Gaich and Associates and Douglas Goldfarb, Regional Vice President,
ASC, Inc./DLG Consulting
With cost control continuing to be a mission critical concern of IDNs, supply chain and the revenue cycle departments are beginning to look at integrating their strategies. This collaboration allows actual costs to be utilized in market pricing decisions and strategic payer contracting. Using technology, the integration links supply chain with the billing functions of a hospital and results in all chargeable supplies being accurately represented in the chargemaster. If hospitals synchronize supply chain and revenue cycle processes, they can optimize reimbursement and mitigate compliance risk by creating greater transparency and increased flow of information.
Learning Objectives:
1. Identify the administrative challenges in integrating supply chain and revenue cycle operations.
2. List the technology changes needed to accomplish this merging of functions.
3. Specify how merging supply chain management and revenue cycle management advances cost-to-charge transparency and increases accuracy in terms of
managing reimbursement costs.
All information is subject to change. Last updated 08/03/17.