Can care coordination improve outcomes?
Top Results
Overview
St Vincent's Hospital Indianapolis contracted 1Unit for support in implementing their first Accountable Care Unit with SIBR rounds. After several months of success on the initial pilot ACU, the hospital leveraged internal project managers and the 1Unit Platform to support spread to 5 other hospitalist units.
Objectives
The hospital wanted to leverage the ACU care model to improve throughput and costs, while improving physician efficiency.
Methods
1Unit provided online and onsite training to unit staff over a number of days, that also included hospital leaders (hospitalist group leader, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Nursing Officer). 1Unit also provided ongoing weekly implementation support and mentorship to the unit leaders and hospital executives to optimize the unit’s success as standard.
St Vincent's were able to leverage the skillset of a Ph.D. program health economics researcher to analyze the clinical and cost outcomes, which were presented at a US health economics conference in 2019.
Results
Throughput Outcomes
0.6 day reduction in length of stay
0.7 day reduction in excess days
Clinical Outcomes
7.3% reduction in direct costs
13.7% reduction in supply costs
Return-on-Investment
$1,024 reduction per excess day
Unit-level savings of $896,700 per year compared to the non-ACU control units.
Conclusion
The ACU with SIBR rounds implementation resulted in significant improvements in throughout and costs of care, justifying spread of the model to a further 5 units in the hospital.
