Quality improvement brings financial rewards to Hawaiian health system
The charts said it all – high levels of quality improvement coupled with significant savings as Hawai’i Pacific Health changed the way it provided care and started tracking gains on both the clinical side and the financial side.
Its work landed it a 2012 Enterprise Davies Award from HIMSS, parent company of Healthcare Finance News, and at HIMSS13 two of its executives, Steve Robertson, CIO, and Dale Glenn, MD, discussed lessons learned at a session called “ROI Through Quality Improvement: Davies Winner Lessons from the Field.”
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The health system has demonstrated an annual return on investment from its Epic EHR implementation of 9 percent over 10 years. Success was achieved through the integration of all revenue cycle functions and by driving financial and clinical performance through transparency, collaboration and accountability, according to the organization’s Davies Award application.
Health IT was not limited to inpatient and outpatient settings. Today, Hawai’i Pacific Health patients can view their laboratory results, educational materials, appointment scheduling and health maintenance reminders on a Web portal. More than 29,000 patients now regularly communicate through the portal, averaging 650 log-ons per day.
Among some of the savings Robertson charted for the audience on Tuesday were:
• Reduced write offs by $23.2 million
• Reduced transcription costs by $15.4 million
• Improved documentation led to $14.2 million in savings
Dale referred to fee-for-service medicine as fee-for-sickness medicine that is "physician-centric" rather than patient centered. And a lot of the tasks – such as prescription refills, emailing education scheduling – are not billable.
“To change the model of care, we changed the center to the patient,” Dale said, which in turn helped clinicians provide better, less fragmented care – team care, with guidelines and protocols, and everyone on the same page.
