In health care today, organizations often engage in quality improvement because it is seen as the right thing to do. Any financial benefit that results from these improvement efforts is considered a nice bonus, but not an expected goal. Furthermore, the structures of most payment systems employed in the industry have made it difficult for providers to experience significant financial benefits from quality improvement. However, given the continued rise in health care spending, coupled with the current state of the economy, a new way of thinking is necessary. Health care administrators and clinicians need to focus on creating efficiency while simultaneously maintaining or improving quality of patient care.

To achieve this goal, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and the Healthcare Financial Management Association are co-sponsoring a three-part executive webinar series, Strategies for Reducing Expenses Without Compromising Care.

This three-part webinar series will help to create a portfolio of work that will systematically identify and eliminate waste, leading to a 1% to 3% savings in operating costs per year.

After participating in this webinar series, participants will be able to:

• Describe principles of creating efficiencies and their application to health care
• Develop a waste reduction portfolio for their organizations
• Identify and implement at least one example of creating efficiency in their organizations and the associated financial savings

Experts and organizational leaders such as John Toussaint, MD, Founder and President of the ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value, Scott Hamlin, CFO and Senior Vice President, and Fred Ryckman, MD, Pediatric Surgeon, of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, as well as experienced IHI faculty will provide you with the necessary steps to make an impact on the bottom line while maintaining a consistent level of quality. In addition, representatives from Sigma Aldrich, a leading life science and high technology company that is able to save approximately 2% each year, will share tools that may be used in any country and industry to track cost savings.