Hospital-Wide Deployment at a Community Hospital
A community hospital (458 beds; 21,000 annual admissions) did a three month pilot test of IllumiCare, wherein it compared physicians of the same type with and without IllumiCare.
The intervention group with IllumiCare out-performed the control group by $278 per admission, on a DRG-adjusted basis.
These results caused the hospital to deploy IllumiCare to every provider. The hospitals cost per patient day for medications, labs and imaging fell by $61 (in the chart below, the blue line is the baseline period and the green line is post go-live). In less than one month that translated to savings of $260,000.
When providers are given the wholesale cost of medications, labs and radiology tests in real-time (in context with the electronic medical record), they become more diligent in their ordering and they tend to order lower cost tests and medications. This also lowers patient risks associated with overutilization (e.g., anemia from phlebotomy blood loss, cancer from medical radiation, etc.).
“I hardly ever hear physicians speaking positively about anything; but I have overheard several conversations where they did speak positively about this project.”
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In less than two minutes we can show you how IllumiCare uses the power of cost data at the point of care to reduce spending.