Government Mandates Provide Biggest Barriers to Healthcare Cost Reductions, According to New HealthLeaders Media Intelligence Report

DANVERS, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--One in four U.S. healthcare executives say that government mandates are the biggest barriers to achieving sustainable cost reductions in their organizations, according to exclusive research from HealthLeaders Media. Nearly 90 percent say their organizations lack the clinical and financial data necessary to identify opportunities for cost savings.

“Our research illustrates that one-time cost slashes are not a long-term solution for hospitals and health systems. Leaders need smart and sustainable plans for spending less money”

The new report, “Cost Containment: Targeting Cuts, Enhancing Efficiency and Using IT,” found that government mandates were the number-one obstacle in cost containment efforts (cited by 27 percent), followed by physician-hospital relationships (19 percent) and unsupportive organizational cultures (15 percent).

For those executives who have been able to implement successful cost containment initiatives, purchasing (32 percent) and labor efficiencies (21 percent) were mentioned most frequently as providing the highest dollar-value reductions.

“You can’t really capture reductions until you are using the labor you have more efficiently,” says Nickolas A. Vitale, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Beaumont Health System in Royal Oak, Mich. “You can reduce the workforce once, maybe twice, but you can’t continue to go to that well. You have to get more efficient.”

Other key findings in the report include the following:

89 percent of healthcare leaders lack the integrated clinical and financial data they need to target cost savings;
Four in 10 healthcare leaders say they still need to cut 6 percent or more from their annual operating budgets;
Continuous improvement techniques (68 percent) are the most popular tools that executives use to foster cost containment initiatives; and
IT is the biggest area of non-clinical FTE growth, with 32 percent of healthcare leaders expecting to add to their IT staff.

The comprehensive industry Intelligence Report is available for free download now: http://content.hcpro.com/pdf/content/285081.pdf.

There are also two value-add versions of the report available for purchase containing in-depth analysis and additional features. The Premium version includes takeaways on each survey finding and lets buyers segment data according to their needs. The Premium version of this cost containment report, which may be purchased at www.hcmarketplace.com/prod-10736, also contains three case studies on how leading health systems are finding cost reductions, along with recommendations and discussion questions for healthcare leadership teams.

The special Buying Power version of this report, which is available for purchase at www.healthleadersmedia.com/buyingpower, is designed for healthcare industry suppliers and includes detailed drill-down data on purchasing trends and projections to aid sales strategies.

“Our research illustrates that one-time cost slashes are not a long-term solution for hospitals and health systems. Leaders need smart and sustainable plans for spending less money,” says Edward Prewitt, editorial director at HealthLeaders Media. “By enlisting your entire team and applying smart IT solutions, executives can identify opportunities for improvement, then benchmark and monitor processes to deliver on efficiency goals.”

HealthLeaders Media

HealthLeaders Media, a division of HCPro, Inc., is a leading multi-platform media company dedicated to meeting the business information needs of healthcare executives and professionals. As an integrated media company, HealthLeaders Media includes HealthLeaders magazine, HealthLeadersMedia.com, the HealthLeaders Media Intelligence Unit, HealthLeaders Media Rounds events, HealthLeaders Media Breakthroughs reports, and California HealthFax. All these platforms may be found online at www.healthleadersmedia.com.