Case Studies

HFS Consultants’ Proprietary Benchmarking Tool Pinpoints Cost Reduction Opportunities for Marin General Hospital

SITUATION
HFS Consultants was contacted in December 2010 by Marin General Hospital, a 235-bed acute care facility in Marin County, California, to obtain assistance with realizing its cost reduction goals. The hospital requested that HFS perform a benchmarking diagnostic assessment of all of its major departments in order to provide them with an understanding of how they compared to similar hospitals in California.

SOLUTIONS
To perform the comparative analysis, HFS used its proprietary benchmarking database tool, which is a proven methodology for processing data from OSHPD and is a more sophisticated tool than anything currently available in the industry. Working with Marin General, HFS helped hospital executives choose appropriate similar size hospitals to compare themselves to.

The analysis also included benchmarking that provided an assessment of overall hospital performance, productivity and costs as well as evaluating specific departments in nursing, ancillary functions and support services.

Once the results were in, HFS met every week for 14 weeks with hospital managers and staff, focusing on where opportunities existed for cost reductions and developing sustainable solutions to meet productivity improvement and cost reduction goals.

RESULTS
Based on benchmarking results, it was determined that cost reduction opportunities totaling $6 to $7-million existed in the following Marin General departments: Imaging, Operating Room, Laboratory, Women and Infants unit, and the medical acute, surgical acute and intensive care nursing units.

HFS presented Marin General with specific recommendations for cost control systems, staffing appropriately to actual demand, organizational restructuring and workflow re-design as well as an action plan for implementation. The hospital is currently set to launch the implementation phase.