Common ground: productivity benchmarking for CFOs and CNOs.

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Administration
• Nursing Management
• Health Services Research

Background:

• Accurate measurement of departmental productivity is crucial for hospital financial officers (CFOs) and chief nursing officers (CNOs).
• Existing productivity benchmarks can be complex and difficult to implement in real-time hospital settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify a robust and easily calculable productivity metric for hospital departments.
• To evaluate the necessity of incorporating case mix and acuity into productivity benchmarks.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of the Hours per Patient Day (HPPD) metric.
• Assessment of the impact of case mix and patient acuity on productivity measurement.
• Evaluation of HPPD's adaptability to various service types, including outpatient and observation services.

Main Results:

• Hours per Patient Day (HPPD) is a strong and straightforward productivity measure.
• Case mix and acuity do not require integration into effective productivity benchmarks due to real-time collection challenges and inconsistent impact on HPPD.
• HPPD can be readily modified to account for the labor demands of outpatient and observation services.

Conclusions:

• HPPD offers a practical and reliable method for assessing hospital departmental productivity.
• The exclusion of complex variables like case mix and acuity simplifies productivity benchmarking without compromising accuracy.
• HPPD is a versatile metric adaptable to diverse healthcare service delivery models.