No matter how many times I see these numbers about waste and inefficiency in hospitals, they are still shocking. Mike Swinford of GE Healthcare shared these stats Tuesday at the MidAmerica Healthcare Venture Forum in Chicago:
- 58% of assets are idle at any given time
- 13 million surgical cases started late
- 20% – 40% of hospital-acquired infections are from hospital staff
- 1,088 million more hours waiting in the ED than necessary
- 60% of hospitals operate at or over capacity
- 54.2% of hospitals operating costs is labor
- 45% of hospitals are still creating employment schedule manually
- $25 – $50 million per year in waste
He listed all these factors — combined with reduced reimbursements — as guiding the shift in the Services division of GE Healthcare away from equipment maintenance and training to data analysis and workforce optimization.
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
“All of our projects are now aimed at productivity and safety,” he said. “Our customers want more from me so they can get better ROI elsewhere. We realized we needed to pivot the business into areas where we can help customers save money and they can’t just squeeze us on the maintenance.”
He listed these three focus areas as the core of GEHC’s outcome-driven portfolio.
1. No wait states – improving patient flow from admittance through discharge.
2. Labor productivity – more efficient and safer human resources.
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
3. Asset optimization – making better use of machines and employees.
“No healthcare system has a logistics or operational management system, so we are assembling a command center for them to improve outcomes,” he said.
Swinford said that at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Texas, GEHC’s services helped cut the average length of stay by 12 hours. At Aventura Hospital in Florida hold hours in the ED were cut by 68%. I asked him how long until GEHC had a complete solution for reducing wait states throughout the hospital. He said that while the division is building a comprehensive road map to do that, hospital administrators are focusing on the big bottlenecks first. Because hospitals have separate systems for various tasks — bed management system or departmental scheduling systems — the appetite to solve the whole thing at once is pretty limited.
“We can help them with an infusion pump solution with RFID and then use that same system to address hand washing,” he said. “It’s a technology and platform that is scalable.”
