Shared Services within Healthcare Providers

Tom Foley, Principal, and Christine Armstrong, Principal, Deloitte Consulting, LLP. Cost containment and efficiency are likely to remain on hospital systems’ executive agendas long after the recession has passed. Fortunately, today’s environment brings new opportunities to providers’ battle against costs. One such opportunity is to adopt a shared services model for business support activities. Done well, the use of shared services can greatly help hospital systems in their efforts to navigate a challenging economic landscape without forcing them to compromise the quality of patient care. Jeff and Tom discuss why today’s changed circumstances make shared services more feasible than ever before, the shared services value proposition includes more than just lower costs, and opportunities to pursue shared services for process areas like Revenue cycle/patient financial services, Procure-to-pay (supply-chain and accounts payable), Finance and Accounting, HR and employee services, and Information Technology. They include tips for hospital systems on how to effectively implement and run a shared services organization.