Advisory Board Company Announces $4 Million in Savings from Four Hospitals


Washington – The Advisory Board Company has announced that four hospitals and health systems have saved, in total, more than $4 million by utilizing data analytics to identify opportunities to improve patients’ health while reducing the costs of unnecessary care.

These initiatives, conducted through The Advisory Board Company’s Crimson performance analytics program, produced more than $4 million in aggregate savings for FHN (Freeport, Illinois), St. Elizabeth Healthcare (Edgewood, Kentucky), Genesis HealthCare System (Zanesville, Ohio) and Medical College of Wisconsin(Milwaukee, Wisconsin).

“As health systems redesign their services for population health management, providers need precise and accurate data to pinpoint patients at highest risk of poor outcomes and avoidable cost,” said Richard Schwartz, CEO, Health Care at The Advisory Board Company. “By using Crimson, these four organizations have created winning strategies for risk-based payment by tailoring population health management to their patient mix and organizational strengths.”

The four case studies stand out among organizations using Crimson to transform care:

Disease Management: FHN saved $2.1 million and reduced PMPM costs for patients in its disease management program by 31% over two years. The 11-location system cut per-member-per-month costs for asthma by 70%, coronary artery disease by 57%, hyperlipidemia by 19%, diabetes by 9%, and hypertension by 6%. With Crimson, FHN’s clinicians used chronic condition hierarchical groups to define disease groups and prioritized these five disease groups based on opportunity for outcome improvement and confidence in ability to reduce cost.

Observation Cases: St. Elizabeth Healthcare achieved more than $1.1 million in savings from acute admissions and shorter inpatient stays that included a decrease of more than 2,900 observation hours over eight months. St. Elizabeth used Crimson to track observation admissions for those patients with inpatient admissions and Crimson provided St. Elizabeth regional and cohort comparisons to establish benchmarks for observation cases.

COPD: Genesis HealthCare System saved more than$500,000 and decreased 30-day COPD readmissions by 34% over three years. Crimson used cohort benchmarks to show an opportunity for the system to improve COPD outcomes and the system implemented a COPD Navigator program.

Imaging Utilization: Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) saved more than $650,000 from its costs of care from 2013 to 2014 by decreasing unnecessary imaging utilization for its self-insured employee population. MCW used Crimson to identify drivers of avoidable care utilization and noted potentially unwarranted diagnoses associated with imaging procedures.

An analysis of 448 individual hospitals that were members of The Advisory Board Company’s Crimson performance analytics programs for at least five years shows significant improvements in population health outcomes for these hospitals’ second through fifth years in the program. For those years, these hospitals have measured a decrease of more than 100,000 readmissions, resulting in aggregate savings of more than$1.3 billion – more than $3 million per hospital – and a reduction in reported complications of more than 300,000, an improvement of 1.7%.

Today, more than 1,000 individual hospitals, ACOs, medical groups, physician practices and clinically integrated care networks use Crimson performance technologies to manage 10 million patient lives, achieve reduced care variation, attract patients and physician referrals and improve medical group performance.

For more information, visit advisory.com.