Due to financial constraints, health systems are looking for ways to reduce healthcare costs without jeopardizing patients’ health and safety. The cost-benefit ratio of patient care is precarious. Hospitals must examine cost-cutting strategies strategically or risk compromising care and increasing costs.
The three suggestions below can help your organization get started.
Reduce burnout and turnover
Healthcare organizations that want to reduce healthcare costs without jeopardizing patients’ health and safety should ask, “What can we do to improve the work experience of our staff?” You can support staff by creating a welcoming environment, removing barriers to performance, and empowering staff to succeed. For instance, you can hire a physician recruiter firm like Masc Medical to ensure personalized job placement solutions. In addition, taking good care of existing healthcare staff helps retain healthcare workers that are already familiar with your organization’s mission and ideals. If workers stay in the workplace, your company can save money from recruiting and training new staff.
You can focus on the following area to support staff:
- Training and development. Additional training programs and development opportunities empower associates to perform well in their roles. Training and development opportunities motivate associates to stay with a company, contributing to long-term cost savings.
- Celebrating associates. Publicly recognizing and thanking healthcare teams and colleagues strengthens engagement and retention. Employees who receive acknowledgment are more inclined to stay with their company.
- Reducing nonclinical work. Remove hurdles that prevent clinical healthcare workers from spending more time taking care of patients.
Optimize scheduling, staffing, and patient flow
Optimization is another way to reduce healthcare costs without adversely affecting patients’ health and safety. For example, hospitals can analyze how patients move across their facilities to create a standardized flow. Optimizing patient flow reduces delays and patient waiting time, preserves a trained workforce, and ensures that each bed is occupied.
Hospitals can cut costs by closely monitoring their right personnel at any given time. In addition, the analysis of hospital data trends can assist leaders in determining the best workforce strategy for all departments. For example, use data to predict whether the patient census is likely to rise or fall and adjust capacity planning to match those trends. This way, you can ensure that your staff will not be overworked, leading to burnout.
Choose your trusted partners
Standardization is another way for healthcare facilities to reduce healthcare costs while protecting patients’ health and safety. Begin with areas of expertise such as food service, HR, IT, EVS, labs, and support services. Offshoring and standardizing these services lowers overhead and frees up funds for hospitals to reinvest in other areas.
Healthcare organizations must consider outsourcing since too many distributors, and modalities waste money, while variability undermines patient quality care. Healthcare organizations can reduce expenditures by standardizing services with a trusted partner culturally and operationally aligned with the hospital.
Final thoughts
Healthcare providers that use staff burnout reduction strategies to take care of their staff can improve scheduling and patient flow. As a result, they can optimize contracts when managing purchases to reduce healthcare costs while safeguarding patients’ health and safety.
