Hospitals and health systems across the country are shedding workers or implementing hiring freezes as their budgets get tightened.

It is precisely during these times that they should deploy healthcare IT throughout their enterprise so patient safety and quality of care are not impacted, said Margaret Mayer, director of marketing for Boston Software Systems.

Hospitals need to focus on four specific areas to bail out their budgets:

• Areas to automate manual tasks
• Opportunities to improve the complex revenue cycle
• Materials management efficiency
• Technologies that offer high and quick ROI

Process improvement with the help of healthcare IT will save money and time, Mayer said. "For the people remaining, there's more work to do, but now they can do more work more accurately and quickly," she added.

By automating manual tasks, hospitals may find that patient care is often enhanced, Mayer said. Staff at Newport News, Va.-based Riverside Health System was spending hours updating their registration system to log out patients in the emergency department.

Deploying Boston WorkStation reduced that process from eight hours to less than one, freeing up full-time employees for other tasks. Equally important, physicians can get updated patient data on a daily basis from the ED.

Hospitals must also look for opportunities to improve their revenue cycle and create efficiencies in material management, Mayer said. By exchanging electronic files with its suppliers, insurers and other third parties, Baton Rouge, La.-based Woman's Hospital is automating such tasks as processing orders.

This allows staff to work with more vendors and offer high-value services to its departments such as searching for higher quality items at cost savings across more vendors. Woman's Hospital is able to handle the additional volume of work despite having only two buyers for medical and surgical purchasing.

Automation across the enterprise has helped Woman's Hospital reduce its minimum order penalties and save an estimated $355,000 in contract management processes in fiscal year 2006.

Especially in this recession, hospitals should invest in technologies that offer high and rapid ROI, said Mayer.

Riverside Health System partnered with the State of Virginia to match its patient population with the state's death registry. The process saved staff more than 350 hours per year, as well as improved patient satisfaction and community relationships.

The combined ED registration and state registry synchronization has saved Riverside more than $25,000 and more than 2,400 staff hours per year.
"The bottom line to bailing out a budget is to look for ways to maximize savings with a minimum investment," said Mayer.