Tool helps hospital reduce LOS,
early readmissions and notch savings
Catawba Valley Medical Center, Hickory, NC, is a not-for-profit, public healthcare system providing and promoting the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being of the public in addition to serving as a center for health education, wellness services, preventative medicine and acute care. Twice recognized by the American Nurses Credentialing Center as a Magnet facility, it was named as a Hospital of Choice by the American Alliance of Healthcare Providers and twice awarded a “Distinguished Hospital for an Outstanding Inpatient Experience” by J.D. Power and Associates. Catawba Valley Medical Center.
Challenge:
CVMC hospitalists are from an internal medicine group that contributes 50 percent of admissions. The group has tremendous impact on CVMC’s financial success, so leadership wants the hospitalists to be top performers by integrating case management into their practice and linking clinical outcomes to financial efficiency.
Solution:
- ClinicalAdvisor™ provided the data which highlighted issues, allowing teams to act quickly and specifically. Specific clinical focus area reports showed top quartile performers and variance within the hospitalists’ practices. An “all points bulletin” was initiated to educate physicians about targeted variance (example: frequently used antibiotics).
- Clinical pharmacists provided a synopsis of recently approved antibiotic substitutions.
- A multidisciplinary team, including at least one hospitalist, meets
daily to discuss case management issues including resource utilization,
quality, discharge planning, readmission status, etc. It spotted
barriers to effective, efficient continuum of care:
- Process for transferring patients to inpatient rehabilitation
- Effective outpatient diabetic education
- Prompt consultation responses
- Interaction between physicians and clinical pharmacists
Result:
- Improved average LOS in several areas by more than one patient day during a four-month period
- Reduced early readmission rate by more than 2 percent
- Estimated direct cost savings of more than $370,000
"Doctors can really make a difference by collaborating in
multidisciplinary efforts to provide evidence-based care. Premier provides us a
combination of decision support and comparative benchmarking data as well as
best-practice research that our executive team believes are critical to meeting
our patient care objectives as a magnet institution."
Sara Herron
Director of Utilization Management
Catawba Valley Medical Center
Read or print the story (.pdf)