Does Your Health System Have An Innovation Office?

Business as usual isn’t working as heath care as in industry approaches 18% of GDP. Fortunately, many organizations are prioritizing efforts and initiatives to increase efficiency and value. However, a vast number are still trapped in a traditional budget model that doesn’t allow for new ways to approach cost-reductions, even if it means investing in new technology to reap the benefits of long term cost and quality improvements.

Progressive health care systems, like our partners including Gundersen Health System and Penn State Hershey Medical Center, have been investing in our technology and including our trusted analytics into their service line operations. Like the other leaders in our national network of providers, they have made improving cost and quality a clinical initiative as well as a financial priority.

A growing trend, hospitals are discovering new ways to prioritize innovation. For example, forward-thinking health systems like Geisinger and Cleveland Clinic have launched innovation offices to help identify, finance, and introduce emerging technologies into practice. At Avant-garde Health, we support the proliferation of this business unit and are continually working with innovation officers to demonstrate and provide the value of our advanced analytics.

In a Harvard Business Review piece this week entitled “Hospital Budget Systems Are Holding Back Innovation,” Avant-garde Health CEO Derek Haas along with advisors Dr. Michael Jellinek from Harvard Medical School and Professor Robert Kaplan from Harvard Business School offered their thoughts on the vital role and benefit of an innovation department.

According to the authors, “Hospital leaders should consider establishing a central innovation budget and decentralized service line/IPU structures. Such changes will make it easier for them to acquire innovative technologies that will enhance patient outcomes and lower their service lines’ costs.”

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