Idea
Cloud

Focusing on What Matters in Health Care Costs…Health Care

Beyond comfort, patient rooms create a better healing environment through noise reduction, placement of equipment, and furniture to facilitate family support.
Beyond comfort, patient rooms create a better healing environment through noise reduction, placement of equipment, and furniture to facilitate family support.

Can we improve patient care and experience by controlling costs?

Read the question and ask yourself: What is the focus of the question, costs or patients?

A story recently ran in USA Today under the headline, “Hospitals try to find savings, cut unnecessary care.” The story focuses on health care systems that are using data to determine effective care protocols given the wide variation of care delivery techniques that permeates the system currently, and how much of that care is practiced more on tradition than on best practice.

Reading the USA Today headline, though, the focus is definitely on costs, to which we ask: Shouldn’t it be on the patients and improving their care and experience? While changing a practice can reduce the cost of the care provided, haven’t we improved the patient’s experience if we make it less expensive or less invasive without any loss of quality?

Therein lies the hurdle that we are having a hard time overcoming in our efforts to improve care for patients. Many bifurcate the definition of costs into outlays and income, payers and providers. Limiting the discussion to only those two subsets, we overlook others who have a stake in the debate, mostly patients and staff. Yes, the rising cost of care has been unsustainable, and, unfortunately, the outcomes have not always justified the costs of that care.

As that last sentence suggests, though, these discussions should be led by outcomes, not simply costs. By improving the outcomes or improving processes to maintain effective outcomes, we can improve the costs, i.e. better healing environments, lower infection rates, reduced staff fatigue, fewer medical errors, etc.

The article hits the nail on the head. With access to better data, it is possible to examine variables that influence our care and study their effectiveness. With better information, we can make smarter decisions about delivering that care. Smarter decisions mean better care for patients and better finances for an organization. The headline, as well as the debate, should reflect the focus on making smarter decisions about the care patients receive, not simply looking at the costs.