Cost- Cutting Strategies In A Healthcare Organization

One way to reduce healthcare operational cost is by reducing overheads in the administration department. This can be done by centralizing similar operations in the organization to reduce on redundancy, automating the healthcare system to improve on accuracy, speed of information processing and to enhance general efficiency. This can also assist in reducing excessive workers in the department. Outsourcing for administration services that do not require full-time operation can also be done to enhance efficiency (Culter, Wikler & Basch, 2012). Another strategy to reduce cost in healthcare organization is by focusing on preventive measures rather than focusing on effective treatment of preventable disease. The organization should focus on educating patients on preventive measures that include good diet, exercises, avoiding bad health behaviors,and regular checkup for the identified high risk group. Prevention cost is normally less than the treatment costs especially for disease that include cancer, heart diseases, diabetes and obesity among others (Fries et al., 1993). Another strategy that can be considered in this case is enhancing operational efficiency. This calls for effective utilization of the healthcare organization resources to reduce wastage. The healthcare personnel should be committed into proper utilization and care of available resource to avoid wastage and preventable breakage. This will reduce procurement and maintenance cost.

Another strategy to reduce cost includes promotion of safety, accountability and efficiency in treating and caring for patients.  Operational efficiency, safety and accountability will promote thorough treatment of a condition in the first visit to avoid readmission, and handling complex cases that could have been avoided, reducing medical errors which complicates a case, and avoiding hospitalized infections. This will generally reduce the cost of care not just to the patient receiving the care but also to the healthcare organization. As efficiency and accountability increases, the organization gest a chance to reduce wastage and extra resources to allocate elsewhere and hence reducing cost.  Another way to reduce cost is by enhancing care efficiency in terms of reducing waiting time and offering care in a different way that include promoting evidence based care where most patients respond to the provided treatment much faster than when evidence-practice is not promoted. This will reduce hospital stay and the number of resources needed to enhance general treatment and hence reducing the operational cost. Another strategy is by reducing excess workers in a healthcare organization, based on the patient proportion in the organization. This will reduce the employment cost and hence assist in cost reduction (Cosgrove et al., 2013).

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