Becker's Hospital Review

27 CFO / FINANCE Brigham and Women's Implements $41M Cost-Cutting Initiative: 6 Things to Know By Kelly Gooch B oston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital, a teaching hospital of Har- vard Medical School, began a cost-cut- ting drive last year amid increased pressures to reduce costs, STAT reports. Here are six things to know about the hospi- tal's cost-cutting efforts. 1. Prior to the cost-cutting drive, the hospi- tal had spent millions of dollars preparing for a planned nurses strike that was eventu- ally averted. A record snowfall also tempo- rarily stopped or restricted admissions, and the hospital had installed a $400 million EHR system, STAT reports. 2. e goal of the cost-cutting drive was to re- duce the hospital's $2.6 billion annual spend- ing by $50 million. 3. To help achieve this goal, the hospital of- fered voluntary retirement buyouts to 1,600 employees, but adjusted that number to ap- proximately 1,200 aer determining phy- sicians and grant-funded researchers were included in that initial count. Approximately 800 individuals ultimately accepted. 4. Brigham and Women's also has strived to increase efficiency in terms of operating room use. e hospital came up with a plan where surgeons, who work in the OR in four-hour blocks, and their divisions "would release any unbooked slots 10 days in advance to the en- tire surgical community. In return, they were guaranteed an OR if they needed one at the last minute," according to STAT. e effort paid off. e ORs reached about 85 percent capacity just two months aer the plan was implemented, the report states. 5. Additionally, the hospital saved money by reversing a decision to use mattress pads nurses preferred. Using the mattress pads nurses preferred cost Brigham and Women's $400,000 more annually than the mattress pads other hospitals owned by Boston-based Partners HealthCare had agreed to use, ac- cording to the report. e hospital reversed the previous mattress pad decision aer de- termining no important difference between the two options. 6. With all of these and other cost-cutting ef- forts, Brigham and Women's has found $41 million in savings for the fiscal year that be- gins Oct. 1, according to the report. n Lifetime Health Costs for Las Vegas Shooting Victims at Least $600M By Alia Paavola T he mass shooting in Las Vegas Oct. 1 will cost at least $600 million in lost quality of life, medical bills and follow-up care, estimates Ted Miller, MD, a violence incidence re- searcher at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, ac- cording to U.S. News. The total initial medical charges for the 58 killed and 489 injured in the shooting range from roughly $2.6 million to about $48 million, though these costs will continue to rise as the death toll increases, patients remain in critical condition and survivors seek follow-up care such as physical therapy and trauma counseling. A study by Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine found emergency department and hospital charges for nonfatal gunshot injuries cost 2.4 times more than fatal injuries. While the initial hospital costs remain high for the survivors, due to the severity of the event, Dr. Miller estimates the cost for men- tal health care will be above average. "Indeed, many, many people who were not physically injured will be seeing a therapist, perhaps haunted by PTSD," Dr. Miller told Newsweek. The financial burden of the Las Vegas mass shooting is just a sliver of the overall cost of gun violence nationwide, which totals about $2.8 billion annually in initial emergency department and inpatient charges alone, the John Hopkins study found. n MGMA: 5 Attributes of a Profitable Medical Practice By Leo Vartorella E nglewood, Colo.-based Medical Group Man- agement Association released its "2017 MGMA DataDive Better Performers" study, which includes the five most important attributes of a profitable medical practice. MGMA evaluated 2,941 medical practices on the four key categories of operations, profitability, pro- ductivity and value. After analyzing its findings for the most profitable practices, the MGMA found the most profitable practices shared key similarities. Listed below are the five most important attributes of these practices. 1. Achieving higher revenues while controlling op- erating expenses 2. Monitoring IT expenditures 3. Achieving greater physician productivity 4. Increasing patient portal usage 5. Overall effectiveness in faster patient scheduling, same-day appointment availability and minimizing no-shows and cancellations n

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