The impact is felt widely throughout the industry and by all healthcare executives. I recently read an article by HealthLeaders about itssecond annual CFO Exchange. For the exchange, HealthLeaders brought together 30 finance leaders from hospitals and systems nationwide for a discussion about how their organizations were “tackling some of the more demanding healthcare mandates in history while maintaining a grip on their purse strings.”
One of the topics of discussion at the exchange surrounded the need to capture financial data and use it to impact business analytics and processes. And, in HealthLeaders 2013 CFO Forecast, Mark Bogen, SVP and CFO of South Nassau Communities Hospital said, “As we budget for 2013, we have to balance the quality agenda against affordability and we must set clear measurements and use benchmarks and ensure we’re getting the outcomes from those investments.”
Over the past year when we’ve convened our own focus groups with supply chain leaders, we’ve heard an almost identical refrain. There is no doubt that until an organization can actually measure what is being done (and how much it costs), it is nearly impossible to know that doing something differently will be more effective. This creates a mandate for more data, benchmarks and best practices.
As we move into 2013, we at MedSpeed will continue our focus on helping healthcare organizations to streamline operations, maximize supply chain logistics and aggregate data germane to the space. As we move forward on these initiatives, we look forward to sharing more information in future blog posts.
The past few years in healthcare have been rife with change. As 2013 dawns, I hope the changes within our industry continue to make improvements for the patients we serve. Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2013.