Cost and Quality Improvement
Payer / Provider Partnership Implementation |
Business Performance Management |
Executive Facilitation
The revolution in healthcare quality and cost management is here to stay.
At McQueen Consulting, we believe in the importance of real physician leadership – and have deep expertise implementing programs with physician partners. On their own, traditional approaches to cost reduction—such as Lean and Six Sigma—neither surface the boldest opportunities, nor guarantee sustainable implementation.
We bring three proprietary technologies to our cost and quality improvement work:
- Rapid Cycle Implementation™ – provides an intense design and prototyping experience; creating an irrevocable commitment to implementation in 90 days.
- Dynamic Lean™ — offers analytical tools, benchmarks and co-creation technologies; we access the collective wisdom of your people and stakeholders; leading to strong commitment and improvements that are sustainable in the long run.
- Breakthrough Lab – challenges basic assumptions about the business model and asks the tough questions about growth, cost management, brand and infrastructure.
Major Health System: A Race to Quality and Efficiency – Hospitalist Redesign
CHALLENGE
A Major Health System was tasked to increase the quality and financial impact of their hospitalist program. Patient to physician ratios, length-of-stay and avoidable emergency department admissions were 25-35% above benchmarks.
Hospitalists suffered from low morale and with no effective leadership forum, were largely unaware of how to contribute to system quality and cost goals.
APPROACH
Through a 90-day Rapid Cycle Implementation™, McQueen Consulting helped orchestrate a turnaround. The physician-led process addressed many improvements in the hospitalist program including a strong commitment to hospitalist leadership development and major redesign of incentives. Site visits were used to create a shared understanding of the possibilities. A baseline of key metrics was developed to help track the before and after impacts of the changes.
RESULTS
Early in the program, the Health System saw a significant increase in patient satisfaction, lower lengths of stay, earlier discharges, decreased readmission rates and inappropriate admissions and massively improved hospitalist satisfaction.
- Reduction in hospitalist patient ratios from 19 to 14:1
- 0.25 days initial reduction in med/surg LOS
- Increase in revisits to 3,000
Major Health System: $150 Million Reduction in Operating Costs
CHALLENGE
A Major Healthcare System was challenged to recapture market share by dramatically improving the quality of care delivery and reducing operating cost by 25%. The System had neither the capability nor experience to drive the enterprise-wide changes required.
APPROACH
We began with deep engagement and education of senior leadership to champion Performance Improvement work. A balanced portfolio of projects was selected based on immediacy of return and complexity.
To ensure sustainability and reliability in project execution, McQueen Consulting partnered to build a Performance Improvement organization to continue the work of identifying new opportunity areas, developing business cases and tracking realization of benefits.
Innovative implementation tools such as our Rapid Cycle Implementation™, Value Map™ and Eclipse project management software were tested and adopted.
RESULTS
$100 million reduction in recurring costs in two years, with another $50 million scoped and targeted for year three. Improvements include:
- Supply cost reduction of more than $15 million
- 0.25 day initial LOS reduction for medical/surgical patients treated by hospitalists
- 40% reduction in complications for orthopedic surgical patients
- 25% reduction in medical costs for patients treated in medical home
Insights
Feedback
"I particularly valued the thought-partnership and hands-on approach to building our Business Performance Management group."
"My team talked to our customers, went on great site visits and came back with literally hundreds of new ideas—they took the best, stepped up, dealt with very tough organizational issues and pushed to implementation—with little prodding from me." - SVP, Cancer Research Center
"The most enjoyable and rewarding aspect of my job is helping patients and their families. Now I can spend time with patients and assist with their needs. In 25 years of nursing I have never seen anything like this." - Nurse, Community Hospital
"One of the best consulting partnerships I have worked with." - SVP, Integrated Health System
"I particularly valued the thought partnership and hands-on support for building our own Business Performance Management organization..."
- COO, Major Blues Plan
"McQueen Consulting helped us drive a step function improvement in business results."
- CEO, Major Blues Plan
"I always felt on the outside — now I feel part of the care team." - Patient Spouse
"RCI was a very successful experiment and has since led to improvements in operations and leadership—I am ready to do it again."
- Cancer Research Center
Organizations We Have Helped
We work hand in hand with each company to ensure their problems are addressed and fixed in a timely fashion.