Cost reduction using patient-focused care concepts

The latest wave of hospital reengineering has been based on the concepts of patient-focused care (PFC). PFC concepts include decentralizing low-scale activities to the point-of-care, cross-training employees to minimize hand-offs, simplifying processes to eliminate unnecessary complexity, redesigning the organization structure to focus on the care continuum, and adopting empowerment and teamwork to change individual behavior. Three innovative health systems have begun to reap the benefits of their PFC implementation efforts. Based on these three case study organizations, PFC is not only cost-justified, but also drives increases in quality and service levels. Each of the three case study organizations chose significantly different routes to implement these concepts due to various internal and external factors. Size of cost savings was the result of three main factors: level of change implemented, size of investment required to effect change, and time frame for implementation. Article includes results of economic analysis.