ACTION O-I^®

Comparative Operational Information to
Guide Decision Making

Business issues: Today's healthcare executives must manage their operations more effectively than ever before, ensuring quality of care while keeping costs under control. That means healthcare providers must ask themselves:

• How can we make operational decisions to ensure appropriate resource allocation and sound budget allocations?
• How can we identify the most promising opportunities for financial and operational performance improvement?
• How do we quantify return on investment in our performance improvement initiatives?

Maximize performance improvement opportunities: With data from more than 850 healthcare organizations across the country, ACTION O-I® is the largest financial and operational comparative database in the industry. Use ACTION O-I to reduce operating costs by evaluating your facility's costs against those of "best-in- class" organizations or peers of similar size, payer mix, geography or patient population. Understand the gaps that exist and identify specific areas with the greatest potential cost savings. With new Evidence-Based Information, you can also gain ideas to put research into practice with easy access to current evidence from peer-reviewed and operationally oriented literature. Communicate findings, results and operational changes with ACTION O-I's flexible, easy-to-read reports and graphs. Guide operational change across the organization by incorporating ACTION O-I metrics into measurable department goals. With ACTION O-I, you can also share information on a confidential and reciprocal basis with other Solucient clients.

Discover the advantages: ACTION O-I has unmatched breadth and depth of data, with more departments and more information within those departments, giving you precise comparisons and more relevant detail to support your analysis. ACTION O-I is an operational improvement program utilizing a web based comparative tool and support services. ACTION O-I offers a robust data integrity program that includes real-time checking of client-supplied data.

See results: With sound, timely comparative data from ACTION O-I, you can feel confident about your management decisions. You will increase efficiencies by comparing operational procedures and identifying best practices.

To effectively guide your organization, you need accurate, reliable intelligence for performance improvement. With ACTION O-I, you will:

• Have access to the largest database of client-supplied data in the industry
• Lower costs and increase operational efficiency by comparing to industry benchmarks
• Easily review performance improvement opportunities across all departments
• Use reports and graphs to quantify improvement needs and opportunities

Insight: Improve operations and reduce cost in the endoscopy lab
St. Tammany Parish Hospital recognized the need to increase productivity and reduce cost. As they evaluated their top departmental opportunities, St. Tammany wanted to create an improvement process that would quantify improvements and could be applied to other departments. Comparative information indicated that there were several opportunities for improvement in the endoscopy lab, particularly in staffing levels, skill mix and use of overtime. As a result of their investigation and process improvements, overtime declined from 5.78 percent to 3.69 percent, RN skill mix was reduced from 85 percent to 50 percent, and overall staffing decreased from 8.19 to 4.15 worked hours per patient. These factors combined for a direct cost reduction of $340,000 per year. Most importantly, a process was created to involve staff, management, and physicians that maintained the quality of care while improving productivity and cost performance.

Insight: Improve radiology efficiency
UCLA Medical Center was facing rising healthcare and staffing costs, and clinical departments were challenged to operate more efficiently and reduce expenses without compromising quality. The radiology department in particular faced challenges in staffing, billing, and efficiency. Using comparative data from ACTION O-I, UCLA Medical Center revamped its ultrasound section. They increased staff from six sonographers to 13, replacing several temps and reducing the number of repeat exams ordered by physicians. They also implemented reporting protocols to ensure correct billing for procedures that were going unreported or incorrectly coded. In just 13 months, the UCLA ultrasound section increased revenue by 35 percent and increased section exams by 18 percent.

Obtain unparalleled support for unrivaled results: Our customers can rely on our local account teams' expertise as confidently as they rely on the integrity of our data. Backed by Solucient's Learning Resources center, our teams provide ongoing support, product training and industry expertise to ensure value and ROI. Additionally, the Solucient® Online Community provides a communication and support resource for more than 9,000 healthcare professionals. Look to Solucient for support when you need results.

Product Brief (PDF) Case Study: St. Cloud Hospital, St. Cloud, Minn., Improving Financial Health Leads to Higher Patient Satisfaction (PDF) Case Study: Baylor Health Care System, Dallas, Texas, Baylor Health Care System Saves $2.7 Million in One Year with ACTION O-I (PDF) Case Study: Ascension Health, St. Louis, Mo. Internal Consulting Group Standardizes Benchmarking to Drive Improvement for Member Hospitals (PDF) Case Study: St. Tammany Parish Hospital, Covington, La. Cutting Cath Lab Supply Costs (PDF) Case Study: Saint Thomas Hospital, Nashville, Tenn., Looking Outside to Sustain Excellence in the Radiology Department (PDF) Case Study: VHA Georgia, Solucient's ACTION O-I® Key to Members' Documenting $10 Million Radiology Savings (PDF) Case Study: Bay Medical Center, Panama City, Fla., Center of Excellence Certification Yields Ongoing Rewards (PDF) Case Study: Medical Center of Central Georgia, Macon, Ga. Benchmarking Toward Excellence (PDF) Case Study: CentraState Health System, Freehold, N.J. Expanding to Meet the Demands of a Growing Service Area (PDF) Case Study: Delnor-Community Hospital, Geneva, Ill. Turning Performance Improvement Opportunities into Lasting Bottom-Line Results (PDF) Case Study: Carle Foundation Hospital, Champaign-Urbana, Ill. Creating a Performance Improvement Culture that Fosters Change (PDF)

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For information about ACTION O-I, e-mail th.providerinfo@thomson.com.