RICHMOND, Va. (Business Wire) -- GE is helping to lower the cost of care delivery at hospitals across the country, including Bon Secours Richmond Health System, which today announced it has seen $5 million in savings over a 5-year period through its Performance Solutions partnership with GE Healthcare, a business unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Bon Secours also announced an expanded collaboration with GE that is projected to produce significant additional savings for the health system over the next three years through an expected increase in the number of patients treated in operating and emergency rooms, a decrease in the length of patient stays and a reduction in unnecessary spending on equipment and supplies.
“For more than five years, we've applied process improvements and tracking technologies to help us solve one of the biggest challenges in hospital management: pinpointing where equipment is and when it's idle, so we can redistribute these assets to cut costs and reduce wait times,” said Peter J. Bernard, CEO, Bon Secours Virginia. “Our aim is to more broadly apply this efficiency model across the health system to deliver better, more cost-effective patient care.”
Central to the five-year cost savings achieved by Bon Secours, a four-hospital, 850-bed health system in Richmond, Virginia, was the facility's use of GE's AgileTrac™ Asset Manager. This tool locates equipment in real time, helping hospital staff better manage the use of critical medical equipment. Eighty percent of Bon Secours' savings to date have resulted from the elimination of unnecessary spending on equipment identified through AgileTrac. For example, the health system now deploys 30 percent fewer intravenous (IV) pumps alone. AgileTrac is a third-party validated solution under GE's healthymagination initiative, dedicated to improving the cost, quality, and access of healthcare.
“Using tools such as AgileTrac, we can help hospitals identify and reallocate un- or misused equipment and physical space to reduce inefficient spending, as well as dramatically improve patient wait times for care,” explained Rob Reilly, General Manager of Americas Service Solutions, GE Healthcare. “The ultimate result is a much improved patient experience that costs less.”
Through its extended partnership with GE, Bon Secours will employ a broader suite of services and real-time location system (RTLS) tools, such as AgileTrac Enterprise, to help manage workflow at-a-glance for staff, patients, available rooms and equipment in busy areas of the hospital, such as the operating room (OR) and emergency department. For instance, flat screen computers with the RTLS software are now located in the OR to help ensure on-time starts to surgery and reduce wait times. Doctors and nurses can use touch-screen features to notify appropriate personnel when a patient is ready for the next step in surgery. The system automatically notifies staff once a patient enters recovery so preparations for the next surgery can begin immediately. Reducing each procedure by 20 minutes can potentially help Bon Secours expand access to surgical care to more than 1,000 additional patients each year while adding millions in annual revenue to the bottom line.
“These real-time location technologies are advancing us to the next level of hospital performance, not just financially, but in care delivery and patient satisfaction as well,” said Kathy Santini, RN, Vice President of Surgical Service, Bon Secours Richmond Health System. “By improving the efficiency of our processes and workflow – especially through the use of new technologies – we can better serve our community, giving more patients access to the important health services we provide.”
ABOUT PERFORMANCE SOLUTIONS:
GE Healthcare's Performance Solutions team is dedicated to the improvement of health systems' clinical and financial performance. Focusing in areas for improving growth and outcomes, reducing medical errors, creating efficiency, and reducing costs all help position health systems and hospitals for success. Performance Solutions experts advise clients on effective ways to implement Lean, establish new management processes, develop leaders, build strategic plans and help health systems enhance their entire business cycle. Recognizing the significant challenges facing today's hospitals, Performance Solutions is strategically aligned around four solutions:
- Asset Optimization – Process improvements and technologies that pinpoint when equipment, staff and space are idle, helping hospitals reallocate these assets to cut unnecessary spending and reduce patient wait times for care.
- Service Line Innovations – Support hospitals in identifying their community's unmet health needs, such as stroke or cancer care, and investing in the staff, resources and technologies necessary to better, more efficiently offer these services to area patients.
- Care Delivery Excellence - Processes and technologies that improve patient flow, quality of care and patient safety by using the broad suite of GE health information technologies to eliminate unnecessary tests, increase the speed and accuracy of diagnosis and treatment, and decrease wait times and length of stay.
- Culture Driven Performance - With its talent development training portfolio, GE coaches hospital management on how to empower staff to deliver the best, most affordable patient care and to improve their organizational leadership excellence.
ABOUT GE HEALTHCARE:
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.
Our "healthymagination" vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality and efficiency around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com
ABOUT BON SECOURS HEALTH SYSTEM, INC.:
Bon Secours Richmond Health System, a not-for-profit health care system, has four hospitals in the greater Richmond metropolitan area; St. Mary's Hospital, Memorial Regional Medical Center, Richmond Community Hospital and St. Francis Medical Center. Bon Secours also has numerous outpatient and diagnostic facilities, physician practices under the Bon Secours HealthSource umbrella, a School of Nursing and a School of Medical Imaging.
Bon Secours has been recognized nationally as one of the best companies for working mothers and workers over the age of 50. For the eleventh consecutive year Bon Secours has been named one of the “100 Best Companies for Working Mothers,” by Working Mother. Also in 2009, Bon Secours was named in the Top 3 nationally on AARP's “Best Places to Work for People over 50.” Bon Secours' national recognition is attributed to its excellent childcare benefits, flexible working hours, work/life benefits and career advancement opportunities. St. Mary's Hospital and Memorial Regional Medical Center are both recognized for their nursing excellent by being Magnet certified.
Bon Secours Richmond is a member of Bon Secours Health System, Inc., a national Catholic health care system with a healing ministry that serves 15 communities in nine states throughout the eastern United States. More information on Bon Secours Richmond is available on the Internet at www.bonsecours.com.
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