Healthcare organizations are under tremendous pressure from payers, government and consumers to improve their clinical performance. The cost of these projects is increasing exponentially, and some have much greater financial benefits to the hospital than others. For example the current CMS indicators for acute myocardial infarction are designed to reduce mortality, but virtually all that benefit will occur after the patient is discharged. While the hospital absorbs the increased costs, there are no offsets in the costs of therapy, or the average length of stay.

How do you decide what projects to fund? Ideally performance improvement initiatives should have the same sort of financial proformas as other major investments. Unfortunately most performance improvement specialists have little understanding of the economic consequences of their projects. Finance officers are in a unique position to assist clinical staff in the design, implementation and outcome assessment of these projects to ensure maximum value to the organization.