Health care providers everywhere are responding to the tremendous market pressures by acting to reduce costs. Yet the evidence, according to Robert Kaplan and Derek Haas, suggests that many cost-cutting attempts are counter-productive; they actually increase costs and in some cases lead to poorer outcomes. That’s because cost reductions are usually made without considering the optimal mix of resources needed to deliver excellent outcomes in an efficient manner.
To make matters worse, clinical personnel, the people who actually treat patients, are seldom involved in decisions about how to achieve savings, which means that providers lose out on significant opportunities for benchmarking and standardizing medical practices in ways that can deliver lower costs and better care.
In this interactive Harvard Business Review webinar, Kaplan and Haas share insights on how not to cut health care costs, and offer advice to provider organizations on effective processes for successful cost reductions.