Slide 14

Emphasize Process, Focus on Results

• What really matters to the organization? Achieve bottom-line results.
• Can we measure the impact of the project?
• How much has the project contributed this year and will contribute in future years?

Notes:

In the Define or Plan stages of the project, senior leaders, including financial advisers, will be asked to define the current state and financial cost specific to the discharge process. For example:

• How many full-time equivalents are allocated to the discharge process?
• What is the cost of materials that are currently in place for patients and their families?
• What is the cost of error associated with failure to reconcile medications?
• What is the organizational cost of readmissions for the specified patient population?

Determining the current business case for allocating resources needed to be successful in Project RED will be important early on, before changes are made in the process. If, for instance, the current readmission rate of 13.5 percent of heart failure patients causes X amount of revenue loss for the institution, how does that revenue loss change with the application of Project RED improvements? A key point or critical success measure in this module will be the extent to which senior leaders assist teams in gaining access to key concurrent financial data and outcome metrics to determine the overall project impact.