An activity-based costing system co-developed by UPMC and Health Catalyst has led to millions of dollars of supply savings for the health system in recent years while reducing clinical variations and improving patient outcomes – achievements recently recognized by a Microsoft Corp. award.
Microsoft named UPMC and Health Catalyst joint recipients of a 2018 Health Innovation Award for the cost-management system, Health Catalyst CORUS Suite. The award was presented during the HIMSS 2018 conference in Las Vegas last month.
The CORUS Suite enables chief financial officers, physicians, service line leaders, and clinical and financial analysts to understand the true cost of providing care by tracking each activity that takes place during a patient’s full interaction with a health system. Those costs also can be related to patient outcomes, a key metric for a value-based care system.
“In this era of value-based care, health care organizations must get a better handle on how much it costs to deliver care so we can manage that cost and eliminate waste,” said Robert DeMichiei, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of UPMC, which is an investor in Health Catalyst.
“At UPMC, we knew we would need an analytic solution that could turn cost data into actionable information – such as by revealing the relationship between cost and clinical variation, identifying best practices, and suggesting opportunities for improvement,” DeMichiei said.
“Our partnership with Health Catalyst has been the answer,” he said.
UPMC has used CORUS’s activity-based costing and analytics to effectively drive cost savings and improve clinical outcomes in many of its service lines, including Surgical Services, Women’s Health, Orthopedics, and Cardiovascular.
Overall, the CORUS Suite generated $5 million in supply savings and gave management insights into $42 million in cost reduction opportunities, including decreases in unnecessary clinical variation and more efficient deployment of OR labor. The time required to access cost information was reduced by up to 97 percent.
Read more about the benefits UPMC has gained from the use of CORUS and learn more about the Microsoft Health Innovation Award.
