NURS FPX 6612 Assessment 4 Cost Savings Analysis

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Capella university

NURS-FPX 6612 Health Care Models Used in Care Coordination

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Date

Cost Savings Analysis

This assessment briefs an executive summary on a cost-savings analysis spreadsheet. Cost savings data has been compiled in the spreadsheet for the role of senior care coordinator, which dictates how care coordination can promote the organization’s financial health by reducing costs and enhancing cost-savings along with improved patient outcomes. This is possible when the organization integrates strategic planning of Health Information Technology (HIT) and promotes care coordination by leveraging technology. Following is the executive summary of cost-savings analysis by harnessing the power of care coordination and utilization of HIT.

Cost-Saving Elements		Current Costs ($) Per Year		Anticipated Savings ($) Per Year
Preventive Care Programs		15,000		8,000
Care Transitions		10,000		5,000
Telehealth Services		7,500		3,000
EHR Optimization		12,000		6,500

NURS FPX 6612 Assessment 4 Cost Savings Analysis

The cost-saving elements in the spreadsheet are preventive care programs, care transitions, telehealth services, and Electronic Health Record (EHR) optimization. Implementing preventive care programs is expected to reduce downstream healthcare costs, resulting in anticipated savings of $8,000. Implementing effective care transitions with coordinated and collaborative care can reduce costs from $10,000 annually to $5,000 due to reduced hospital readmission rates and improved post-discharge care (Abraham et al., 2022).

Similarly, the current costs of in-person consultations per patient per year are $7,500, which is anticipated to save $3,000 annually by implementing telehealth services. This can reduce the need for physical hospital visits and save organizational resources by saving costs for physical checkups. The last cost-saving element involves EHR optimization, reducing administrative errors, and improving data accessibility. As a result, the anticipated savings are $6,500 from current costs of $12,000 due to inefficiency and outdated EHR.

Ways in Which Care Coordination Can Produce Cost Savings

Care coordination is the delivery of healthcare services with the collaborative effort of the multidisciplinary team within a healthcare organization. Care coordination can produce cost savings in several ways, such as conducting preventive care programs through care coordination, which can reduce the likelihood of expensive acute care treatments. One study states the prevention costs for preventing disease outbreaks and their subsequent costs for ten years are approximately 2% of the actual costs of the COVID-19 pandemic (Dobson et al., 2020). This shows that preventive care programs might incur additional costs initially but result in cost savings in the long run by preventing diseases in the future.

Similarly, care coordination is essential in chronic care management. Patients with chronic diseases require holistic care from different disciplines, such as physicians, nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists, patient educators, and counselors (Caskey et al., 2019). Effective care coordination in chronic disease management leads to fewer hospitalizations and better management of chronic conditions. This results in substantial cost savings. One study evaluated the role of care coordination in saving Medicaid expenditures and concluded that chronic condition management with care coordination decreased costs from $1633 to $1341 (Caskey et al., 2019).

NURS FPX 6612 Assessment 4 Cost Savings Analysis

  With the help of EHR optimization, care coordination improves and reduces unnecessary duplication of tests, which leads to cost savings in the range of $29.6 billion to $38.2 billion per year (Kumar et al., 2022). Additionally, care coordination can improve the efficiency of care transitions and help streamline patient discharge with effective patient education and guidance. This reduces hospital revisits and readmissions and saves costs incurred by additional treatments and resources (Tomlinson et al., 2020).

Underlying Assumptions in Analysis

The analysis assumes that care coordination programs are well-designed and tailor the interventions to the population’s specific needs. Moreover, integrating HIT, such as EHR optimization across the healthcare system, supports seamless communication and information sharing. Another assumption the analysis is based on is that active patient engagement and participation in care plans in the care transition process can lead to the success of care coordination efforts (Tomlinson et al., 2020).

Care Coordination, Improved Health Consumerism, and Positive Health Outcomes

Care coordination is crucial in promoting improved health consumerism and contributes to positive health outcomes. Care coordination involves actively engaging patients in their healthcare journey from acute care to chronic care management. Thus, it fosters a sense of responsibility for their well-being and promotes self-management. With empowered patients, the chances of adherence to treatment plans are increased, positively impacting patients’ health outcomes and enhanced health consumerism (Vogus et al., 2020). 

Moreover, care coordination ensures a holistic approach to patient care. Social determinants of health and lifestyle factors are adequately addressed to tailor the care plans to the patient’s health needs and relevant factors. Patient-centered care positively influences health outcomes by addressing the broader context of a patient’s life (Karam et al., 2021). When care coordination is implemented in preventive care plans and early intervention strategies, the progression of diseases is substantially reduced, particularly in managing the burden of chronic diseases and improving overall health.

By providing care coordination through HIT, such as EHR and telehealth services, patients are better connected to their healthcare providers. This results in solid adherence to treatment plans and prescribed medications, resulting in better disease management and improved health outcomes (Crowley et al., 2022).

Care Coordination and Collection of Evidence-Based Data

Care coordination requires the involvement of various healthcare professionals from multiple disciplines to deliver coordinated and organized healthcare services to deliver apt and high-quality care treatments to patients. Implementing Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) as a healthcare model augments the effort of collecting substantial data through care coordination (Coran et al., 2021). ACOs focus on fostering collaboration among different healthcare providers. Care coordination efforts within ACOs can ameliorate gathering evidence-based data by prioritizing data sharing and interoperability.

The exchange of patient health information leads to a more comprehensive and cohesive dataset (Fraze et al., 2020). Additionally, ACOs adopt population health management strategies and care coordination in this model, which can improve piling data by emphasizing preventive care and leveraging data analytics to identify trends and patterns for intervention. When the care coordination within ACOs focuses on outcome measures, cost-effectiveness, and patient satisfaction, evidence-based data is collected easily, as these factors also align with the principles of value-based care (Fraze et al., 2020). 

NURS FPX 6612 Assessment 4 Cost Savings Analysis

 ACOs often implement patient risk stratification by identifying high-risk patients who can benefit from targeted interventions. Care coordination can enhance the gathering of evidence-based data by tailoring care plans based on individual patient risk profiles, leading to more effective and personalized healthcare (Coran et al., 2021). Furthermore, leveraging the Health Information Exchange utilized by ACOs can improve care coordination efforts to gather evidence-based data.

HIE facilitates the secure sharing of patient information across different healthcare entities and ensures relevant patient health data is accessible to all healthcare providers in the care continuum (Kharrazi et al., 2023). The logical implications of implementing ACOs as a healthcare model for care coordination will be integrated data sharing, promoting a proactive approach to improve health outcomes, patient-centered care, and reduced redundancies with adequate sharing of patient health information among all providers (Kharrazi et al., 2023).

Conclusion

Analyzing current costs and anticipating savings through integrating cost-saving elements is imperative for healthcare organizations to improve the organization’s financial health and patient health. The spreadsheet developed for cost-saving analysis includes four elements: care transition, preventive care programs, telehealth services, and EHR optimization. Care coordination can generate cost savings and reduce expenditures through preventive care plans, efficient care transitions, better management of chronic diseases, and seamless communication using optimized EHRs.

Consequently, healthcare outcomes and health consumerism are enhanced. Care coordination within ACOs helps better data collection through an integrated data-sharing strategy, emphasizing prevention and early intervention care, patient risk stratification, value-based care, and using HIE to increase the accessibility of patient health data among healthcare providers.

References

Abraham, J., Meng, A., Tripathy, S., Kitsiou, S., & Kannampallil, T. (2022). Effect of health information technology (hit)-based discharge transition interventions on patient readmissions and emergency room visits: A systematic review. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocac013 

Caskey, R., Moran, K., Touchette, D., Martin, M., Munoz, G., Kanabar, P., & Van Voorhees, B. (2019). Effect of comprehensive care coordination on Medicaid expenditures compared with usual care among children and youth with chronic disease. JAMA Network Open, 2(10). https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.12604 

Coran, J. J., Schario, M. E., & Pronovost, P. J. (2021). Stratifying for value: An updated population health risk stratification approach. Population Health Management. https://doi.org/10.1089/pop.2021.0096 

Crowley, M. J., Tarkington, P. E., Bosworth, H. B., Jeffreys, A. S., Coffman, C. J., Maciejewski, M. L., Steinhauser, K., Smith, V. A., Dar, M. S., Fredrickson, S. K., Mundy, A. C., Strawbridge, E. M., Marcano, T. J., Overby, D. L., Majette Elliott, N. T., Danus, S., & Edelman, D. (2022). Effect of a comprehensive telehealth intervention vs telemonitoring and care coordination in patients with persistently poor type 2 diabetes control. JAMA Internal Medicine, 182(9), 943. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2022.2947 

NURS FPX 6612 Assessment 4 Cost Savings Analysis

Dobson, A. P., Pimm, S. L., Hannah, L., Kaufman, L., Ahumada, J. A., Ando, A. W., Bernstein, A., Busch, J., Daszak, P., Engelmann, J., Kinnaird, M. F., Li, B. V., Loch-Temzelides, T., Lovejoy, T., Nowak, K., Roehrdanz, P. R., & Vale, M. M. (2020). Ecology and economics for pandemic prevention. Science, 369(6502), 379–381. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc3189 

Fraze, T. K., Beidler, L. B., Briggs, A. D. M., & Colla, C. H. (2020). Translating evidence into practice: ACOs’ use of care plans for patients with complex health needs. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 36(1), 147–153. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-020-06122-4 

Karam, M., Chouinard, M.-C., Poitras, M.-E., Couturier, Y., Vedel, I., Grgurevic, N., & Hudon, C. (2021). Nursing care coordination for patients with complex needs in primary healthcare: A scoping review. International Journal of Integrated Care, 21(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.5334/ijic.5518 

Kharrazi, H., Horrocks, D., & Weiner, J. (2023). Use of health information exchanges for value-based care delivery and population health management: A case study of Maryland’s health information exchange. Health Information Exchange, 523–542. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-323-90802-3.00011-3  

NURS FPX 6612 Assessment 4 Cost Savings Analysis

Kumar, S., Qiu, L., Sen, A., & Sinha, A. P. (2022). Putting analytics into action in care coordination research: Emerging issues and potential solutions. Production and Operations Management, 31(6). https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.13771 

Tomlinson, J., Cheong, V-Lin., Fylan, B., Silcock, J., Smith, H., Karban, K., & Blenkinsopp, A. (2020). Successful care transitions for older people: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of interventions that support medication continuity. Age and Ageing, 49(4), 558–569. https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afaa002 

Vogus, T. J., Gallan, A., Rathert, C., El-Manstrly, D., & Strong, A. (2020). Whose experience is it anyway? Toward a constructive engagement of tensions in patient-centered health care. Journal of Service Management. https://doi.org/10.1108/josm-04-2020-0095