Productivity Monitoring

With continued reductions in managed care payments and the increasing costs of many items such as labor, pharmaceuticals and debt, it is becoming increasingly difficult for hospitals to achieve targeted profitability levels. While some opportunities remain to increase revenues, decreasing expenses has become more critical for many hospitals. Because labor is the largest single expense for hospitals, it makes sense to focus efforts on reducing labor expense.

However, case studies have shown that many “slash and burn” staffing reductions are generally beneficial only in the short run and often lead to increased costs over time due to increased overtime, agency usage, and staff turnover. Only realistic productivity standards which are sponsored by executives and supported by department managers can foster long term productivity gains while protecting quality patient care.

In addition to management buy-in and realistic standards, systems and processes must be established to effectively implement a productivity monitoring system. Agreement to methods of measuring performance, communicating the results, and appropriate incentives and consequences must all be in place to receive the maximum benefit from a sustainable productivity monitoring system.

At Kreg, we combine the capabilities of our state-of-the-art decision support technology with the experience and know how of our Strategic Services consultants. This combination provides you with many unique benefits. Kreg has established a comprehensive and interactive process from analyzing job functions and their fixed/variable components and identifying appropriate workload statistics to determining historical performance patterns and facilitating the establishment of customized productivity standards and reporting structures.