Managing Costs While Improving Care With Web-Based Solution

By Karla Paris

A Minnesota children's health system is set to leverage advanced cost accounting to drive financial performance, better manage costs, and improve value.

National health spending grew 3.6 percent in 2013, the lowest annual increase since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) began tracking the statistic in 1960. These findings were published online on December 3, in a report issued by officials from the journal Health Affairs. The report also points out that, in the near term, the health sector will “undergo major changes that will have a substantial impact” on consumers, providers, insurers, and sponsors of healthcare.

With health spending increasing only slightly, healthcare providers are looking for ways to better manage costs and protect margins while still providing the best patient outcomes. One provider in Minnesota is doing its part to protect itself and its patients.

Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota (Children's) partnered with Strata Decision Technology (Strata Decision) to implement StrataJazz for decision support and cost accounting in an effort to drive its financial performance, better manage its costs, and improve its overall patient value.

A major focus of this agreement is bringing clinical and financial data together to make more informed decisions driving better value for their patients. StrataJazz Cost Accounting will integrate with Children's enterprise systems including Peoplesoft Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) from Oracle and their Electronic Health Record (EHR) from Cerner Corporation. Children's will complete their implementation of StrataJazz in January 2015.

StrataJazz is a comprehensive suite of solutions for planning, budgeting, reporting, and decision support. It provides a full range of cost accounting, budgeting, forecasting, and planning functions, integrates with virtually any data source, and provides advanced reporting to enhance accountability.

By consolidating all planning and decision support processes in a single database, StrataJazz enables hospitals and hospital networks to maximize staff productivity and collaboration, while increasing control over its financial future.

It is expected that once StrataJazz is fully implemented, Children’s will have access to more accurate data about costs and margins, supporting its organizational initiatives for both population management and care transformation.

Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota is one of the largest pediatric health systems in the U.S., and the only health system in Minnesota to provide care exclusively to children, from before birth through young adulthood. An independent and not-for-profit system since 1924, Children's serves kids throughout the Upper Midwest at two free-standing hospitals, 12 primary and specialty-care clinics and six rehabilitation sites.

SOURCE: PRNewswire