Diagnosis? Healthcare is sick…

Tough read this week for sure, I came across this post and wanted to provide some numbers to reflect the current state of healthcare and thus the influencers on health systems and their decision process. This is important for all of us, not just the health systems but patients as well. The more the health system is weakened by financial strain, the harder it will be for patients to find appropriate levels of care.

Respondents to this article (hospitals) include the following facts: 30% are seeing decline in elective procedures, 40% reported a drop in admissions, majority of hospitals seeing patients who are unable to pay for care; in order to deal with financial strain hospitals are cutting administration, reducing staff, reducing services and many are postponing investments into facilities or equipment. All of these things point back to patients not being able to find care quickly and efficiently.

The operating room is the largest revenue center and the largest cost center of the hospital – so it goes without saying that the more effectively a health system manages it’s OR’s, the more resources it will keep on hand. Cohealo can help with this – our technology and service offering allows health systems to create a ‘shared economy’ among all facilities and locations to reduce the amount of money invested in redundant medical devices and/or equipment. The costs avoided through this shared economy help the health systems avoid the decisions that were mentioned above – millions can be saved in one hospital, let alone a health system that owns and operates 2 or 3 dozen hospitals.

When you look at the healthcare market as a whole, there are over 5,000 hospitals and with many of our hospitals residing in the most densely populated cities, the shared economy can create billions of dollars in savings over the next decade.