Texas Hospital Saves $2.8 M with Performance Improvement Program

Weslaco, Texas-based Knapp Medical Center saved $2.8 million in one year using the Charlotte, N.C.-based Premier healthcare alliance’s QualityConnect performance improvement program.

Since The Joint Commission realigned its focus on professional practice evaluation in 2007, the pressure has been on hospitals to develop fair and constructive ways to evaluate physician performance. The QualityConnect evaluates cost per case, resource utilization, length of stay, and revenue audit contracting to find areas for cost savings.

Knapp began using QualityConnect’s QualityAdvisor solution in June 2008 to improve the hospital’s clinical performance and support its professional practice evaluation efforts.

Knapp attributes approximately $2.8 million in savings to its OPPE program and practitioner profiles in QualityAdvisor. In the first year, Knapp’s reductions in average length of stay resulted in eliminating 1,304 days of care. The hospital also saved 98 days through eliminating readmissions, 27 deaths were prevented, and it avoided complications in 28 cases.

Knapp gave presentations to physicians when launching QualityAdvisor to explain the database of more than 600 facilities, the ability to benchmark against other “like” hospitals, risk adjustment for clinical and financial measures, and physician measures to be collected.