Financial Analysis of Pediatric Resident Physician Primary Care Longitudinal Outpatient Experience
by
Robert S. Kaplan, Carole H. Stipelman, Brad Poss, Laura Anne Stetson, Luca Boi, Michael Rogers, Caleb Puzey, Sri Koduri, Vivian S. Lee and Edward B. Clark
Objective
To determine whether residency training represents a net positive or negative cost to academic medical centers, we analyzed the cost of a residency program and clinical productivity of residents and faculty in an outpatient primary care practice with or without residents.
Methods
Patient volume and revenue data (Current Procedural Terminology codes) from an academic primary care general pediatric clinic were evaluated for faculty clinics (faculty only) and resident teaching clinics (longitudinal outpatient experience [LOE]) with 1 to 4 residents per faculty. A detailed cost per resident was determined using a departmental financial model that included salary, benefits, faculty and administrative staff effort, nonpersonnel costs, and institutional graduate medical education support.
Results
The LOE clinics had a greater mean number of patient visits (11.6 vs 6.8) than faculty clinics per faculty member. In the LOE clinic, the number of patient visits per clinic was directly proportional to the number of residents per faculty. The cost for each resident was $250 per clinic ($112 per resident, $88 per medical assistant per resident, and $50 per room per resident). When factoring in clinic costs and faculty supervision time, the LOE clinics (average 3.5 residents with 1 supervising faculty) had greater average cost (+$687.00) and revenue (+$319.45) and lower operating margin (revenue minus cost, −$367.55) than the faculty clinics (1 faculty member).
Conclusions
Pediatric resident LOE clinics had a greater average number of patient visits and revenue per faculty member but higher costs and lower operating margins than faculty clinics.
Robert S. Kaplan, Chris Hartnick, Mahek Shah, Steven M. Coppess, Alisa Yamasaki, Kaalan E. Johnson, Jeremy Prager, Christopher T. Wootten, Thomas Gallagher and Evan Propst
Leaders at six hospitals conducted a research study to assess and compare the health outcomes and costs of pediatric aerodigestive care. Four of the hospitals delivered care with an integrated practice unit (IPU) while two delivered care traditionally, with isolated specialists. The study used time-driven activity-based costing as a tool to measure and compare costs across the six sites. The results demonstrate that the four IPU sites improved clinical outcomes and had lower costs of care.
Kaplan, Robert S., Chris Hartnick, Mahek Shah, Steven M. Coppess, Alisa Yamasaki, Kaalan E. Johnson, Jeremy Prager, Christopher T. Wootten, Thomas Gallagher, and Evan Propst. "Assessing the Value of Pediatric Aerodigestive Care."NEJM Catalyst Innovations in Care Delivery 4, no. 1 (July–August 2020).
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Christen Caloway, Alisa Yamasaki, Kevin M. Callans, Mahek Shah, Robert S. Kaplan and Christopher Hartnick
Value-based care models are becoming instrumental in structuring clinical care delivery in our healthcare climate. Our objective was to determine the value associated with implementation of a Family-Centered Care Coordination (FCCC) program for neonates undergoing tracheostomy.
We use time-driven activity-based costing to estimate the cost of personnel and space for an elective coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery at two U.S. hospitals, Intermountain and Baylor Heart, and Narayana Health (NH), in India. All three hospitals use modern management methods to achieve excellent patient outcomes. We use variance analysis to remove the effect of differential prices paid for personnel and space at the three hospitals. NH, even at U.S. price levels, retains a cost advantage over the two U.S. hospitals by shifting tasks to less-credentialed and/or less-experienced personnel, supervised by highly-skilled personnel, a practice facilitated by NH’s high annual CABG volume. NH offsets some of its task downshifting cost savings by having lower-skilled employees spend more time counseling patients and their families for in-hospital and home recovery. NH’s cost-saving practices could be captured by U.S. hospitals by relaxing hospital and health professional licensing regulations, encouraging greater family participation in inpatient care, and performing complex surgeries in high-volume regional centers of excellence.
