Health care costs are easily one of the biggest problems facing the United States today. Excessively expensive health care has ruined—or even taken t in some cases—lives, as well as provided a dampening effect on hiring, business growth and a host of effects. But health care providers are doing their part to help keep costs down, and MedAssets has recognized several such providers' efforts to lower costs and maintain high-quality services at their, recently-concluded ,2012 MedAssets Healthcare Business Summit.
The event offered a set of awards for health care providers who “demonstrated savings and / or financial improvement” in their line of service via eliminating waste and improving operating margins. Of particular prestige was the MedAssets President's Award, which was focused on businesses that stood out not only in terms of recent improvement, but overall improvement over a period of time. The 2011 MedAssets President's Award, for example, went to the Texas Purchasing Coalition, which saved fully $65.4 million over just two years of a working relationship with MedAssets. And while that sounds great objectively, it also sounds great relatively, considering that the Texas Purchasing Coalition has an annual supply spend of $829 million, meaning that they saved the equivalent of roughly four percent a year on their supplies.
Other winners of awards at the summit were the Maricopa Integrated Health System of Phoenix, Arizona, which took the Net Revenue Leadership award, Hartford Healthcare of Hartford, Connecticut, which took the Net Revenue Innovation award, and two Indiana facilities, South Bend's Memorial Hospital & Health System in Cost Management Community Hospital Leadership and Indianapolis' Community Health Network for Net Revenue Process Improvement, in a tie with Downey, California's Downey Regional Medical Center.
All told, it was a terrific night for the health care industry; while the health care industry itself is having a challenging time, it's clear that they're making significant steps toward solving many of the problems they face. And while they may not be able to solve them all, those that they can, they're working toward, and that should give the rest of us due hope that one day we'll have a future in which the health care crisis is long since gone.
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
