Hospital Business Analytics: Elevating the Spend Analysis

When Lovern joined Piedmont Healthcare two years ago, he brought Colonna onboard to help sift through the supply chain and reduce costs. Their first goal was to find some immediate savings, and by using the data they collected from their initial spend analysis, they decided to bring in a group purchasing organization. The GPO brought about savings—within 12 months, $6 million in costs were cut.

Such savings are only part of the value of the analytics. To help the hospital achieve its strategic goal of expanding, Colonna used a service line analytics tool to gather comparative data on Piedmont’s utilization and device spend for its cardiology groups. By looking at the data for its current facilities, he recognized that growing from 25 cardiologists to more than 100 was a viable and solid strategic decision.

“The analytics present new opportunities for supply cost savings and for growth. We can look at the trending data and work together toward achieving our strategic goals,” Lovern explains.

There are more than a few analytic tools on the market that can help organizations transform their manual spend analysis process into a truly accurate and efficient one. In doing so, hospitals can gain the insight they need to make educated decisions on which areas to decrease their spend, and which areas are worth spending more on to support the strategic vision of the entire organization.