U.S. Healthcare Leaders Attend Record Breaking 2017 Strata Summit

Annual Strata Decision Technology User’s Conference Provides Comprehensive Look at Best Practices in Healthcare Planning and Performance

Aurora Health Care and CGH Medical Center Receive 2017 LEAP Awards

CHICAGO, Oct. 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --  Healthcare leaders from across the nation came together for Lift, the annual Strata Decision Technology (Strata) Summit for healthcare planning and performance.  The record breaking event included 500 attendees representing over 100 healthcare delivery systems across the U.S.  Strata provides the leading cloud-based planning, analytics and performance platform in healthcare. 

“The never-ending changes in healthcare makes it mission critical for leaders in hospitals and health systems to create lift by developing new approaches to better run their organizations, serve their community and help heal healthcare. Unfortunately, navigating this often feels like you are trying to solve the world’s most complex Rubik’s Cube while at the same time trying to make your way through the ‘wild kingdom’ which is the U.S. Healthcare System,” says Dan Michelson, Chief Executive Officer of Strata.  “Healthcare providers are now looking for more advanced and dynamic approaches to financial planning as well as ways to leverage cost data to drive more value for their providers and their patients.”

Leaders from over 20 healthcare delivery systems shared their perspectives and best practices including Aurora Health Care, Grady Health System, Mission Health, Nebraska Medicine, OSF HealthCare, RWJBarnabas Health, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and the University of Virginia Health System.

The keynote address included Stan Brock, the former co-host of NBC’s Emmy-Award winning Wild Kingdom and the founder of Remote Area Medical (RAM)—the largest remote area medical clinic operation in the world.  He has been featured on 60 Minutes, Nightline and as a “CNN Hero” for his work in providing free care in underserved, isolated, or impoverished communities to hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. and around the world.  Also during the conference, Kevin Hays broke the world record in solving a 17x17x17 Rubik’s Cube by over four hours, providing an analog for solving complex problems by breaking them into smaller parts.  To watch him break the record, click here.

Additional highlights from the three-day event included the following:

Strata and Becker’s Healthcare Release Report: CFOs' Fatal Flaw: Survey Finds 9 of 10 Hospital Executives Don't Know their Cost

A recent survey of 100 hospital and healthcare delivery system executives conducted by Strata Decision Technology and Becker's Healthcare found that 90 percent of those responsible for care don’t know the cost of it. This gap is driving the rapid adoption of more advanced cost accounting applications that make data more accurate, accessible and actionable. CFOs are now recogniing this simple fatal flaw — how can you manage cost if the people responsible for it have no access to information? Recognizing that over $3.2 trillion is spent on healthcare in the U.S. every year, with over $1 trillion flowing through hospitals, the lack of tools to effectively understand and manage the cost of care represents a black hole of stunning proportions.  The Strata/Becker’s report examines the state of cost accounting in hospital systems today, including organizations' current cost accounting capabilities as well as their preparedness for costing in value-based payment structures. It then provides an overview of the movement to implement Advanced Cost Accounting and identifies five factors driving hospital system CFOs to put new systems in place.  To download the report: click here.

Strata Launches The Advanced Planning Institute

According to a recent Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) study found that nearly 80% of providers who use an annual budget approach found the budget to be out of date within the first 90 days.  Improved financial performance is a product of better planning, budgeting and control.  As providers shift from volume to value, they are shifting away from the traditional annual processes and static financial plans. To support that transition and help healthcare organizations accelerate their efforts to implement high performance financial planning, Strata launched The Advanced Planning Institute, with over 30 participating provider organizations.  The Institute provided executives with the opportunity to gain insight from thought leaders who have adopted an advanced financial planning process including Mission Health, Nebraska Medicine, and Park Nicollet Health Services who presented at the Institute.  To join the Institute or for more information, please contact The Advanced Planning Institute at [email protected].

Aurora Health Care and CGH Medical Center Receive 2017 LEAP Awards

The LEAP (Lead, Excel, Achieve, Progress) Award recognizes healthcare organizations for outstanding performance in the areas of finance and strategy to benefit both their organization and the community that they serve.  The award honors exceptional healthcare organizations that have used StrataJazz® to solve real world problems related to financial analytics, business intelligence and decision support. Past winners include and CHRISTUS Health in Dallas, Texas, Legacy Health in Portland, Oregon, Mission Health in Ashville, North Carolina, Northwestern Medical Center (NMC), in St. Albans, Vermont and Parrish Medical Center in Titusville, Florida. 

The recipients of the 2017 LEAP Award were Aurora Health Care and CGH Medical Center:

Aurora Health Care:   Aurora Health Care (Aurora), the largest health care system in Wisconsin, deployed cost accounting and decision support to five hospitals and over 150 clinics in only five months.  Cost accounting deployments for traditional cost accounting systems in large healthcare delivery systems often take over three years for just the hospitals.  With advanced cost accounting in StrataJazz, not only did Aurora implement in a few months and include physician practices for the first time, but they also decreased cost accounting processing time by 97%, from days to minutes.  Additionally, their data is more accurate as they redesigned the costing process to leverage expertise from additional functions like supply chain, pharmacy, finance, operations and accounting.  The end result for Aurora is cost data that is more accurate, accessible and actionable.  Aurora was then able to utilize the cost accounting data to identify significant cost savings opportunities.  This data is helping Aurora identify and reduce cost variation, create a broader understanding of profitability, and make better decisions around the strategic growth.

CGH Medical Center:  CGH Medical Center (CGH), a progressive acute care facility located in Northern Illinois, had a strong desire to improve their existing financial reporting processes. They decided to implement a dynamic planning approach, often referred to as “beyond budgeting”.  They leveraged StrataJazz to support this transition and were able to reduce the amount of time they spend on budgeting by close to 50%.  CGH also used StrataJazz for Decision Support to help attain a Volume Decrease Adjustment (VDA) of approximately $950,000 for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS).  A VDA is a payment adjustment granted by CMS to Medicare-dependent hospitals such as CGH when these providers experience a decline in discharges greater than 5% in any given year due to an unusual circumstance or occurrence that is externally imposed and beyond the hospital’s control. Qualifying for a VDA requires the analytical capabilities to determine the proper reimbursement amount and StrataJazz was used to aid in the process of determining the root cause of the decline. 

About Strata Decision Technology
Strata Decision Technology provides an innovative cloud-based planning, analytics and performance platform that is used by healthcare providers for financial planning, decision support and continuous improvement.  Founded in 1996, the Company's customer base includes 1,000 hospitals and many of the largest and most influential healthcare delivery systems in the U.S.

The Company’s StrataJazz® application is a single integrated software platform that includes modules for strategic planning, capital planning, operational budgeting, management and productivity reporting, decision support and continuous improvement.  The Company's headquarters are in Chicago, IL. For more information, please visit www.stratadecision.com.

Contact: Rachael Britnell, [email protected], 312.827.7711

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