Last year, David Skarda, MD was tasked with finding a way to make a meaningful dent in the cost of surgery to support our organizational focus on healthcare affordability. His work, now manifested in Intermountain’s Center for Value-Based Surgery, is yielding impressive results.
Dr. Skarda is the senior medical director for the Center, a cross-functional entity that’s part of the Specialty-Based Care Surgical Operations Lane and involves strong collaboration with Supply Chain and the Clinical Programs. He and Lori Goucher, clinical manager from Supply Chain, are gatherers of ideas for savings who then use our Intermountain resources to make decisions. They aim to do what’s in the best interest of the patient—which involves identifying and selecting surgical equipment and supplies, based on empirical evidence for best outcomes and best value.
This work is already resulting in significant savings. For example, upon working with stakeholder surgeons from four Clinical Programs to review various hemostatic agents in use, Dr. Skarda’s team created a systemwide preferred product line. This standardization has saved Intermountain $116,000 since March 1, 2019, which in turns lowers surgical costs to our patients. Moreover, the team and surgeons replaced an expensive premade agent with one able to be mixed by the scrub tech in-house, a technique that’s less wasteful and more cost-effective and individualized to specific patient needs.
In some cases, savings come as the Supply Chain team standardizes vendor partnerships for particular items and is able to negotiate better pricing. The Supply Chain has renegotiated several contracts for the Musculoskeletal Clinical Program, realizing a savings of nearly $1.4 million so far this year.
“It’s rewarding to focus on this work, knowing that we can have a direct impact on making healthcare more affordable for our patients and the broader community,” said Dr. Skarda.