Ochsner talks Asset Management

Ochsner Health System shares its vision for Asset Management, leveraging real-time location technology, workflow redesign and comprehensive service from GE Healthcare.

Transcript

Warner Thomas, President & Chief Operating Officer, Ochsner Health System
Scot Posecai, Chief Financial Officer, Ochsner Health System
Mike Hulefeld, Chief Executive Officer, Ochsner Medical Center
Chris Belmont, Chief Information Officer, Ochsner Health System
Nattie Leger, RN, Vice President Nursing & Operations, Ochsner Medical Center

Mike Hulefeld:
We were founded almost 70 years ago by five physicians, and so at the heart of Ochsner is a group practice that has now grown to over 750 doctors. And went from one hospital to seven hospitals throughout southeast Louisiana.

It was our responsibility to take a look at what we're doing and really make a big investment in this community.

Chris Belmont:
We're continuing to grow and our challenges are now on a much broader scale.

Providing great service is one of our primary imperatives. But we needed to also manage the assets better. So we reached out to GE to help us with that.

Mike Hulefeld:
We had to take a look at everything we were doing in terms of how we were spending our capital and where we were making investments. And frankly, needed to tighten up and get more efficient

Nattie Leger:
If you talk with a staff nurse, they spend a lot of their time on a day-to-day basis tracking equipment, not really knowing what's on hand, and obviously, those processes create a lot of waste.

We've partnered with GE where they're assisting us in biomed and the first thing they did is did an inventory of all of our equipment.

Chris Belmont:
One of the events that really stood out for us is we were getting ready to buy and additional 50 IV pumps. And GE came back to us and said - "You actually have 70 already on the shelf." So we understood that we weren't really utilizing and optimizing what we had already.

Nattie Leger:
AgileTrac is multifaceted.  It brings in the whole picture.

We identified what we call value-added time, where the nurse is able to track this equipment, have it at the bedside very quickly and not have to hunt from room to room. They'd be able to spend time with the patient. And that's why they went into nursing, to provide the bedside care and not hunting equipment.

Warner Thomas:
AgileTrac will impact workflow. We move assets all over the institution, you know, every day. And in a big institution, you know, you lose track of them. I think AgileTrac will allow us to keep better track of our assets. Make sure that we have them there when we need them.

There's three areas of focus that GE has been working with us on. Number one is maintenance of our equipment. The second is making sure the inventory of our equipment. That we make sure it's not hoarded in certain areas of our organization. And then, third, tracking how we do our capital planning. Only purchase assets in areas that are needed versus duplicate buying, or buying unnecessary assets.  

Many times, in hospitals, you get into who can write the best proposal and bring the best kind of marketing spin to capital planning. And I think GE is bringing a lot more science and a lot more analytics and detail to our capital planning

Scott Posecai
The partnership with GE has certainly been favorable to Ochsner  As we grew, we required more equipment and better management of that equipment. This fits into our growth strategy.

As the CFO of Ochsner I'm very passionate about waste. We are in an environment where reducing the cost per unit associated with all of our expenses is imperative for us to reinvest in our facilities and to provide the health care services that are needed within this organization.

Mike Hulefeld:
As health care continues to get more and more pressure from payers, from government, from patients, we have to get more efficient. And health care organizations are not known, historically, for their efficiency.

Our relationship with GE really is about how do we get more efficient.

My advice is that hospitals and medical groups are good at certain things and not good at other things. And what we've realized is that we need to focus on the direct provision of patient care.

Warner Thomas:
Our core business is about taking care of patients, and delivering health care. You know, we are not an asset tracker. We are not bio med experts. And we've turned to people that we believe are experts in this area.  GE does this for hundreds of hospitals. They have the right infrastructure.  They have the right training. And I think they've added a lot of value to what we do here at Ochsner. And allow us to focus our time and energy on taking care of patients. Which is what our core business is and what we're good in.