NMC TOUTS MONEY SAVING AWARD
ST. ALBANS: Northwestern Medical Center was recently named the recipient of the 2016 LEAP (Lead, Excel, Achieve, Progress) Award for its efforts in leveraging strategic financial planning software to drive efficiencies and reduce hours spent on creating their annual budget.
According to hospital spokeswoman Katharine Laddison, the LEAP Award recognizes healthcare organizations using Stratajazz for outstanding performance in the areas of finance and strategy to benefit both their organization and the community that they serve.
“NMC used budgeting tools in the Strata software to reduce the number of labor hours spent on completing the annual operating budget by 50 percent. The hospital’s finance team also improved the process for reviewing proposals for capital expenses and reduced the steps involved,” said Laddison.
Those budget process changes are estimated to save approximately $50,000 per year. That accounts for approximately 1/5000th of the hospital’s annual $90 million operating cost, according to the most recent public documents published in 2014.
Laddison said she did not know how much money the hospital invested in order to use the software.
The LEAP award also recognized NMC for using a cost accounting framework to save time and for using the decision support framework for reducing patient length of stay and evaluating clinical consistency. These technological tools give the NMC team the ability to monitor metrics on physician and patient-level data.
“I’m proud to be a part of an organization willing to make an investment in these kinds of initiatives and to be progressive in what we’re doing,” said Devin Bachelder, NMC’s Decision Support and Budget Manager.
