3 Smart Ways Hospitals Can Reduce or Control Costs
Hospital administrators are often tasked with reducing unnecessary costs to ensure their facilities can stay up and running. But knowing how to actually accomplish this goal can be daunting, at best. This often requires quite a bit of creative thinking, the following tips can make for a great start.
3 Ways For Hospitals To Reduce Unnecessary Costs
1. Decrease non-care costs: While providing high-quality care does not come cheap, there are other areas of your hospital budget that may have nothing to do with medical care. Overhead costs may improve the patient or employee experience, contributing to better efficiency and satisfaction; however, some administrative expenditures can be reduced without sacrificing these values. Focusing on redundancies within your administration and opting for outsourcing and automation whenever possible can go a long way in giving you some breathing room in your operational budget.
2. Rent hospital equipment: Your facility may take pride in owning its own hospital equipment, but the reality is that this may be a lot less cost-effective. According to Fortune, hospitals use any given piece of hospital equipment about only 42% of the time (or less). The average hospital owns or rents over 35,000 SKUs of medical equipment at any one time. By owning this equipment, you won't be making the best use of your resources and it'll essentially take longer to pay for its cost. In contrast, using hospital equipment rentals may allow facilities to use better equipment for a lower price. Be sure to research the costs associated with medical equipment rentals and compare them with what your facility currently pays to own certain machines to assess how much you may be able to save.
3. Embrace digital tools: The technological landscape changes at a rapid rate, which can make it difficult for hospitals to keep up. But the American Hospital Association argues that electronic processes can actually save the day, rather than ruin it. In a statement, the AHA notes that "when providers utilize the transaction standards and operating rules to establish automated routines for the handling and posting of data, they can benefit from better and more timely data, reduced operating costs, and improved patient satisfaction." As long as your facility is fully compliant with HIPAA standards, using automation and digital tools to save time will increase productivity and accuracy. And ultimately, that means great things for your bottom line.
Understanding the most effective ways to reduce unnecessary costs is never a simple endeavor. But by implementing these ideas into your daily operations, you may be able to reduce costs without sacrificing patient care or satisfaction.