Cost Savings Analysis 

Care coordination among all healthcare staff, including doctors, paramedical staff, and nurses, has shown enormous potential for healthcare financing and delivery systems. Improved care coordination is perceived to result in improved patient health outcomes at an optimal cost. The financial burden on healthcare settings is always a concern for these organizations.

NURS FPX 6612 Assessment 4 Cost Savings Analysis

Therefore, healthcare organizations always welcome new and innovative ideas that can result in cost savings. Healthcare providers run patient-centered programs to have cost-effectiveness and improve the population’s health with patients in high need (Breckenridge et al., 2019).

Ways of Cost Savings with Care Coordination

Care coordination among healthcare settings, clinicians, and specialties have been the basic aim of healthcare payments and reforms for delivery service. It is argued that improved care coordination is a solution to a divided healthcare system, and it would lead to better patient outcomes, better experiences of patients, and reduced costs. Provided with the high costs of hospital encounters, healthcare providers have started patient-centered programs to enhance the cost-effective solution for people with greater needs (Khullar & Chokshi, 2018).

The cost of various therapies is higher due to a lack of communication and coordination between the doctors and other healthcare staff of different healthcare organizations. This gap in communication between care providers results in a higher cost for patients requiring different therapies and medical treatments. Effective and timely communication between the healthcare community can reduce the cost of high treatments and provide quality care with cost savings overall.

As the access to healthcare services is becoming difficult for people, integrated care is getting more important, and investment is envisioned by authorities in integrated care to be the subsidized cost solution for providing quality care. Integrated care will provide improved outcomes for patients at a lesser cost. Further, financial studies are required to address the methodological problems to support policy decisions, with strong evidence of cost-savings of integrated care (Rocks et al., 2020).

Moreover, despite all the efforts, medical errors are still a major concern among healthcare staff. The medical errors that can be prevented contribute significantly to healthcare costs, inclusive of health insurance costs per person. If healthcare staff work together, the cost can be reduced due to errors. The estimated cost of medical errors is about $12 billion (Rodziewicz & Hipskind, 2022).

Care Coordination and Greater Health Consumerism 

Consumers demand data, clarity, and ease that suits their requirements in every aspect of life. The healthcare settings that give importance to their patients by incorporating new and innovative strategies to meet customer demands would remain sustainable despite the evolution and technological changes that occur in due course of time. On the contrary, those organizations that do not fulfill the much-needed demands of their customers would be in a difficult situation (Taylor, 2019).

Care coordination can improve quality health outcomes for patients and fulfill the gaps among healthcare staff for coordination and communication. It will pave the way for better health outcomes and a strong consumer experience for patients seeking quality healthcare.  

A large population has complicated health as well as social requirements. In primary healthcare settings, care coordination for these patients is central and the core dimension of healthcare provision. In the ever-changing and complex requirements of nurses, registered nurses (RNs) have a crucial role. In fulfilling the complex demands of patients in healthcare settings,  efforts must be made to actively empower the primary healthcare level to play its due role in care coordination. Primary care models for employment would encourage integrated care and teamwork and ensure comprehensive, coordinated care delivery (Karam et al., 2021). 

Five Ways of Implementing Care Coordination for Evidence-Based Data

Care coordination is perceived as a methodology for providing collaborative and recovery-focused care to its patients. Care coordinators would strive to connect people and the system of care. Care coordination should be implemented, although it is not consistently done the way policymakers perceive it, and it can be done differently (Hannigan et al., 2018).

Over the past two decades, there has been great interest in interventions for care coordination, particularly to achieve a reduction in acute care services. Care coordination models can enhance the continuity and transition of care. This can be care or case management. A dedicated staff helps the patients manage their health needs and navigate interactions in the healthcare system. The Care Coordination in Chronic and Complex Disease Management highlights the interaction processes and characteristics among health care staff. 

The two areas in which this framework is adopted: 

• Specify who contacted patients in what manner specification
• Outcomes of patient re-organization include patient experience, survival, and quality of life. Healthcare teams and health systems

Healthcare utilization and costs are measured at the patient level. These outcomes are considered healthcare system priorities (Wilt et al., 2020).   

NURS FPX 6612 Assessment 4 Cost Savings Analysis

Cost Savings Data and Information 

The data presented below were collected after implementing Electronic Health Records (EHR). Our team started this initiative to have better interdisciplinary team members. The following are tabulated data for results.

This statistical analysis compares Health Information Technology for hospitals’ savings in the cost before and after a 90-day time frame.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, it is concluded that care coordination and use of EHRs in the framework of Health Information Technology (HIT) provide quality care to patients and, at the same time, result in total cost savings. It is fully utilized when healthcare staff provides fully coordinated care to patients. Care coordination is enhanced by using evidence-based tools and techniques for accessing and managing patients’ records through EHRs. The significant cost savings in our hospital is obtained in different categories, such as medication errors and hospitalizations.  

References

Breckenridge, E. D., Kite, B., Wells, R., & Sunbury, T. M. (2019). Effect of patient care coordination on hospital encounters and related costs. Population Health Management, 22(5), 406–414. https://doi.org/10.1089/pop.2018.0176 

Hannigan, B., Simpson, A., Coffey, M., Barlow, S., & Jones, A. (2018). Care coordination as imagined, care coordination as done: Findings from a cross-national mental health systems study. International Journal of Integrated Care, 18(3). https://doi.org/10.5334/ijic.3978 

Karam, M., Chouinard, M.-C., Poitras, M.-E., Couturier, Y., Vedel, I., Grgurevic, N., & Hudon, C. (2021). Nursing care coordination for patients with complex needs in primary healthcare: A scoping review. International Journal of Integrated Care, 21(1). https://doi.org/10.5334/ijic.5518 

NURS FPX 6612 Assessment 4 Cost Savings Analysis

Khullar, D., & Chokshi, D. A. (2018). Can better care coordination lower healthcare costs? JAMA Network Open, 1(7), e184295. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.4295 

Rocks, S., Berntson, D., Gil-Salmerón, A., Kadu, M., Ehrenberg, N., Stein, V., & Tsiachristas, A. (2020). Cost and effects of integrated care: A systematic literature review and meta-analysis. The European Journal of Health Economics, 21(8), 1211–1221. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-020-01217-5 

Rodziewicz, T. L., & Hipskind, J. E. (2022). Medical error prevention. PubMed; StatPearls Publishing. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29763131/ 

Taylor, K. (2019). Embracing and advancing the consumerist era in healthcare. Frontiers of Health Services Management, 36(2), 15–25. https://doi.org/10.1097/hap.0000000000000069 

Wilt, T., Duan-Porter, W., Miake-Lye, I., Diem, S., Ullman, K., & Majeski, B. (2020). Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Health Administration Health Services Research & Development Service. https://www.hsrd.research.va.gov/publications/esp/care-coordination-models.pdf