Hospital Utilization Process

This article was written by Lisa Miller.
We’re concluding our series on improving your hospital utilization process. If you haven’t already, be sure to read part one and part two.
Take Stock of Your Pharmaceuticals
Biologics extend to pharmaceuticals, although most drugs are chemically synthesized. In either case, it’s been our experience that most drug doses are just thrown away. Although pharmaceuticals are probably the most audited of all, with outside and internal agencies constantly tracking financials, compliance and operations, line-by-line audits of utilization are not common practice.
You’ll need to spend a significant amount of time analyzing your hospital’s utilization data. Click To Tweet
Inspect Outpatient Testing Interpretation
Sometimes outpatient testing results are entered incorrectly into a medical records system, which means the wrong price was charged to the insurance company, or Medicare, and will quite possibly end in retesting of the entire procedure altogether. Also, outpatient coding guidelines contain different information than inpatient guidelines. The challenge is knowing when to use the proper codes. This is why understanding outpatient testing interpretation is key to properly analyzing your hospital’s utilization trends.
Regulate Medical Waste and Excessive Pickup Fees
Many times medical waste and excessive pickup fees are 30% of the overall costs that hospitals just pay because no one is taking the time to check every invoice line item. By reviewing every invoice line item and asking questions about ambiguous charges, you will start to find opportunities for cost savings. If excessive fees are normally 30% of overall costs, then there is already a good chance of a 30% cost savings.
Examine Telecom Services
Telecommunication services is one of the six major hospital purchased services spends, but to manage those costs you must first perform a historical analysis and purchased services contract review. This will not only reveal pricing errors and credits due back to your hospital, but it also reveals utilization trends that greatly affect your telecom costs.
Measuring your hospital’s utilization trends for cost reduction opportunities is tough, and you’ll need an army dedicated to your supply chain department to achieve it. There are so many other factors involved as well, like variations and quality, that affect your purchased services spend. You will need to outsource a lot of the work to an independent group that has the clinical expertise, among other specializations, and experience to do the job right. You’ll want to work with a company like VIE Healthcare.
VIE Healthcare’s expert analysts use comprehensive data to identify trends in your top 50 most utilized supply costs by department. Our system involves proven processes to find cost-savings opportunities. We’ve helped hospitals proactively manage their monthly outsourced purchased services spend since 1999 and now our Invoice ROI™ technology will do the exact same thing for you in real-time. Call our office today at 1-888-484-3332 ext. 500 to schedule a call with founder and CEO Lisa Miller, a healthcare margin improvement expert.