Understanding the Shift in Healthcare Revenue: Insights from CommonSpirit VP Brian Dawson
Part of the challenge facing the healthcare economy today is the plunge in inpatient surgery, CommonSpirit Health System VP of Perioperative Services Brian Dawson tells CEO Josiah Whitman in our 2nd Quarter Behind the Red Line interview. That volume and revenue have gone to outpatient facilities. One solution CommonSpirit has utilized is releasing unused block time and marketing that availability to bring in new business.
Why it matters: “We’re trying to think of everything under the sun to help grow our volume because, as anyone who reads Becker’s knows, large healthcare organizations are losing money because that dollar we used to get from the federal government [during COVID] is now about 65 or 75 cents,” says Dawson.
Details:
- Review data. Look at staff room utilization, block utilization, and release/fill rates.
- Closing ORs and furloughing staff during COVID was a mistake. This resulted in many perioperative nurses leaving the profession, on top of an aging workforce. Trained and qualified perioperative nurses are in short supply.
- Staffing continues to be the biggest obstacle. To address this, it will take assistance from larger systems and front-end investment in staff to support prospective volume.
The bottom line: Know and correctly interpret data points. Staff investment is necessary to support future volume. Court people to perioperative nursing and support newbies.
