From mitigating inflation to monitoring changes in volume and labor cost trends, hospital and health system CFOs have been tasked with navigating multiple financial challenges in the first six months of 2024.
This year has also been filled with opportunities for expansion, particularly in the automation area, which saw increased investments for hospital revenue cycle operations late in 2023.
Becker's connected with four health system CFOs to gauge their thoughts on how the first half of 2024 has gone for their organizations and to discuss lessons learned and takeaways moving into the second half of the year.
Question: We're halfway through the year. What is one lesson you've learned this year that has helped improve your hospital/health system's financial strength?
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Steve Aleman, Prime Healthcare (Ontario, Calif.)
Due to varied factors such as evolving reimbursement trends or the ongoing risks of a cyberattack, it is more important than ever to remain laser focused on identifying early trends in movement in core KPIs and determine the appropriate response as quickly as possible.
For example, so far in 2024, Prime has seen continued shifts in volume and labor cost trends. Accordingly, Prime has drilled down even further into our labor management tools and dashboards to manage that growth in patient volume in an efficient and responsible manner to ensure that the increased revenue, cost efficiencies, and importantly, high-quality care reported in the first two quarters of 2024 continue through the end of the year and beyond.
Robin Damschroder, Henry Ford Health (Detroit)
One of the biggest lessons I'm being reminded of this year is how important it is to lay the groundwork in transformation and automation efforts to ensure team members understand and embrace a shared vision before executing it.
Earlier this year, we thought we'd need to hire dozens more team members in our contact center to help address ambulatory appointment growth. But before doing that, we took the time to evaluate our existing capabilities, which resulted in us realizing we could easily expand our self-scheduling capabilities through workflow and technology enhancements.
In turn, that gave existing team members the bandwidth to take the calls that required a human touch. A bit of thoughtful legwork likely saved us a significant amount of money and is helping pave the way for an overall better consumer experience.
Aaron Lewis, Lifepoint Health (Brentwood, Tenn.)
As I reflect on the first half of 2024, one thing that has been important for Lifepoint Health is keeping our strategic priorities clearly in focus and consistently executing on them despite a challenging operating environment. We have been intentional about focusing on our core growth strategies and making meaningful investments to enhance our operations and ensure the delivery of high-quality patient care.
Additionally, we are focused on improving our cost structure and mitigating inflation challenges that have impacted us over the last couple of years. Overall, I believe that maintaining consistency in our approach has helped us continue to build on our momentum and ensure a solid financial foundation.
Doug Watson, Allina Health (Minneapolis)
It isn’t really a lesson we have learned this year, so much as a reminder of what we have learned before. Success requires careful attention to details and in healthcare, the core operational foundation of success is operating effectively and efficiently while delivering high-quality care. The details matter. We need to support our supervisors, managers and line care teams so they are able to make thousands of good decisions every day. We have been focusing on that by standardizing work where possible, improving throughput processes like discharge planning, access and referral center management, bed management and other core processes that support the teams at the exam table, bedside and whenever they interact with our patients. Doubling down on that has produced some great lift for us.