Cost reduction top priority for hospital innovation

Most hospitals and ambulatory care centers are focusing their innovation initiatives on cost reduction, according to the results of the 2013 Healthcare Provider Innovation Survey from HIMSS and innovation accelerator AVIA.

The type of facility factors into innovation priorities, according to the 92 U.S. hospitals, academic medical centers, children's and ambulatory care centers that participated in the study. Hospitals overall were most focused on cutting costs, while academic and children's hospitals made improving knowledge sharing and management their top priority, and ambulatory care facilities put new patient acquisition at the top of the list.

Providers are making progress in implementing innovative solutions in areas such as population health management, patient follow-up, predictive analytics, clinical decision support and care coordination, according to the findings.

Most of the surveyed providers have dedicated budgets for innovation, though 67 percent reported that budgets total less than $2 million.

The chief barriers to innovation cited are limited personnel, cultural/management challenges and limited investment capital. Almost half (43 percent) expect a return on investment in less than 24 months, though increasingly organizations are undertaking projects with varying expectations on return. More than two-thirds (65 percent) rely on internal staff networks as their main innovation resource. Only 20 percent have a clear definition of what innovation means relative to their organization's goals and just 12 percent have a chief innovation officer. That figure jumped to 64 percent of organizations with annual revenues of more than $5 billion.

"As shown by the survey results, innovation through IT offers opportunities to improve patient care. Successful innovation in health IT calls for integrating structure, efficiency and scale both within and across care delivery settings,'" said Carla Smith, HIMSS executive vice president, in a statement.