What Keeps You Up at Night?

The first installment of our 3-part series discussing the issues most important to hospital executives and how Crothall Services Group can make an impact

Each year, several organizations conduct surveys to determine what issues are most pressing to top healthcare executives. While the precise order can vary slightly, the same list of issues emerges consistently across surveys. Crothall believes we must focus on the issues most important to our clients before we can achieve our own goals.

It's not always easy for a hospital administrator to make the connection between support services and the solutions to big-picture challenges such as "Quality of Care." But many of the capabilities Crothall provides produce benefits with far-reaching impact. Our programs can assist hospital administrators in meeting 8 of the 9 most critical issues they face.

Part 1 of this feature focuses on two of these issues, Financial Challenges and Quality.

Financial Challenges

In support services, the cost of labor is by far the largest expense. By outsourcing these departments, administrators can achieve several financial benefits. A stable, guaranteed departmental budget controls current and future costs while ensuring appropriate staffing levels. The skyrocketing cost of fringe benefits and workman's compensation claims for support services departments is removed from the responsibility of the hospital administrator and guaranteed in the contract price with the outsourced provider. In essence, out-sourcing support services means the right people with the right training, doing the right job for the right cost.

Each support service presents different opportunities to make a financial impact. Increasing productivity in Environmental Services can mean fewer FTEs and lower labor costs. Better training, tools, and chemicals can save in supply costs. Faster bed turnaround time for discharges enables the hospital to care for more patients, increasing revenue and decreasing the need to invest in more space.

Patient Transportation also plays an important role in patient throughput by handling discharged patients more quickly. According to the Health Care Advisory Board, each admission is worth an average of $7500 in net revenue. Using this figure, an improvement in bed throughput by one admission per bed per year in a 300-bed hospital would mean an additional $2.25 million in revenue. Improved patient flow also reduces ED wait times and patients leaving without being seen, increasing potential revenue.

A strong Facilities Management program can extend the life of the physical plant - by far the largest asset any hospital has. This department can also work to reduce energy consumption and implement more efficient equipment and processes. Clinical Equipment Services is essential in maintaining revenue-generating imaging equipment and ensuring uptime. A strong program also extends the asset life far beyond the recommendation of the manufacturer, reducing capital infusions. Great cost reductions can be gained through the elimination of expensive and unnecessary equipment service contracts because a dependable full-service provider will cover all equipment under one guaranteed fee.

Laundry and Linen Services can reduce linen replacement costs through linen utilization programs, including education and process improvement. More efficient equipment and processes can reduce the cost per pound of linen processing as well as utility costs for the facility. And a hospital that owns a laundry processing facility can generate much-needed cash by selling or leasing it to an outside provider, allowing the hospital to focus its attention and resources on clinical care.

Quality

Crothall takes pride in delivering the highest-quality programs in the services we provide. However, we realize that for our clients, Quality means one thing: providing the best clinical care for patients. While Crothall does not provide clinical services to hospitals, the solutions we deliver support the clinical staff in their efforts to care for patients. Beyond the fact that outsourcing allows hospitals to focus on their core competencies while leaving the rest to outside experts, there are measurable, direct outcomes we can create to

promote quality care.

Too much of nurses' time is wasted on non-patient care activities. One of the activities eating up nurses' time is transporting patients. By providing efficient, centralized transport services, Crothall gives this time back to nurses so they can spend more time with patients. At Baylor University Medical Center, Crothall has assumed 76.5 transport FTEs from the Nursing department. The average trip time was 30 minutes, with nurses completing approximately 500 trips per day. As a result, the centralized department gives nurses over 159,000 additional hours per year to care for patients.

Environmental Services has an important effect on clinical outcomes through infection control. 2 million patients per year are victims of nosocomial infections, resulting in an average length of stay up to 14 days longer than patients without infections. To the extent that a clean environment reduces the spread of germs, Environmental Services is key to reducing both infections and the costs associated with dealing with them-up to $40,000 extra per infected patient-a cost that will soon be ineligible for reimbursement.

Crothall serves many of the nation's best healthcare providers: 10 of the Thomson 100 Top Hospitals, 15 of the HealthGrades America's Best 50 Hospitals, and 4 of the 18 U.S. News Honor Roll hospitals. While we are not the cause of these hospitals' success, it is telling that the nation's highest quality healthcare providers are choosing to partner with Crothall Services Group.