Fit for the Future: A Road Map to High Performance

Facing soaring costs and mounting pressure to perform, US health care providers must look beyond mere survival. To create sustainable value for the future, they must develop a growth and profitability agenda that transcends cost cutting and efficiency gains—they must strive for high performance.

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The health care industry is struggling with soaring costs and mounting pressure to perform.

Only a few US hospitals had a very good year in 2005 in terms of margin, and one-third actually lost money. With times set to get even tougher, the challenge they face goes beyond mere survival. To create sustainable value for the future, they will also have to develop a growth and profitability agenda that transcends cost-cutting and other measures to improve efficiency.

Accenture has done extensive research into the components of high performance in many industries. High-performance businesses consistently deliver superior returns to their shareholders through industry and economic cycles and across changes of leadership.

However, high performance in the US health care provider industry is determined by four key attributes—clinical quality, customer satisfaction, operational effectiveness and financial longevity.

Despite industry diversity, all US health care providers share a willingness to embrace change and outstanding execution skills.

These attributes drive providers to deliver some highly innovative solutions, which are probably also their most significant differentiators.

The following capabilities and attributes form a holistic approach to achieving high performance:

• Clinical quality: Keeps abreast and even ahead of evolving standards to consistently deliver excellent care to patients.
  
  
• Customer satisfaction: Includes the patients who receive medical services and the physicians who choose the hospitals for them, the insurers who pay, as well as employees and the local community.
  
  
• Operational effectiveness: Leverages information and communication technologies and resources to enable more informed clinical and business decisions.
  
  
• Financial longevity: Creates long-term sustainable value, growth and market share by permanently wiring the pursuit of operational excellence into the organization's plans and priorities, and ensuring that its offerings keep pace with demand.

High-performance providers differentiate themselves in ways that are important to patients, while performing business operations better, faster and more cost-effectively than the competition.

Here are key strategies that high-performance health care service providers are focusing on now and in the coming year:

• Implement pay-for-performance practices that attempt to directly link reimbursement and quality.
  
  
• Enhance quality and outcomes reporting using business intelligence tools.
  
  
• Accelerate technology implementation by using computer systems to configure vendor products and automate coding, mapping and crosswalks.
  
  
• Evolve toward electronic health records to reduce mediation errors and enhance the bottom line.
  
  
• Leverage the Web to empower consumers to be more involved in their care and to do their own administration.
  
  
• Find new solutions to old problems through collaboration.
  
  
• Consolidate back-office functions to reduce overhead through IT-supported improvements in efficiencies, growth and additional mergers.
  
  
• Manage capacity to enhance service availability and revenue growth.
  
  
• Address new markets by extending their technology focus from administrative efficiency to customer outreach.
  
  
• Leverage strategic outsourcing to further drive cost savings and achieve performance outcomes that endure.

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