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Post Return on Investment
Author: mommdoc
Date: May 18, 2011 6:14 pm
I have a program at my community hospital with 360beds, and it is myself and anoter physician. Additional staff comprise my "team" pulling from other departments, but I need to justify a full-time social worker hired by the hospital. The institution is looking for an "ROI" figure--return on investment--for the SW. I have no idea how to calculate this in terms of costs saved to the hospital. I have the calculators on CAPC, but are there other tools that might be used?
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Re:Return on Investment (by szaglifa on 05/20/2011)
Social workers are invaluable, but can be hard to "justify" given their services are non-billable. However, you can easily make a case in LOS data and mortality rates given their role in facilitating discharges, and their pivotal role in introducing palliative care further "upstream". You can also make a case for improved pt/family satisfaction scores.
Re:Return on Investment (by lhspragens on 05/20/2011)
There is no "right" way to do this, but here are a few ideas:
1) document in detail how the SW will help the 2 MDs see more patients or do better f/u with patients. Increasing your effectiveness and capacity increases total patients served and timliness of service (response time to first consult, timliness of family meetings, support to d/c). This then translates into
- cost savings using the models on cost savings per patient
- increased revenue through MD billing for consults
2) think through how the SW might specifically help with longer stay MICU patients - do you have info on causes and plans re impact? Get the MICU nursing staff to help you estimate impact.
3) think through how the SW might specifically help with post discharge f/u to reduce handoff issues and resolve needs to avoid readmissions. Use real cases and specific plans to help make this concrete and work with the readmissions workgroups on this.

Basically, when you add a resource, someone wants to see that the impact exceeds the cost (ROI). Being more explicit about the added value and planned use of the position and why it is needed should get you much of the way there. Talking to others to get ideas of how to translate that into dollars will help.
Re:Return on Investment (by babcc on 05/20/2011)
I am at a hospital in Middle Georgia where we have a strong psychosocial component to our palliative team. We have 10 full time counselors and 2 advance practice nurses working under two part time palliative physicians. We recently wrote an article in Journal of Palliative Medicine titled, "A Novel Approach to Hospital Palliative Care..." We are now working on proving the cost effectiveness of this model. We have found that our clinical billing providers are able to see many more patients than the traditional models because there is so much time needed with the families in coordinating family meetings, dealing with grief and the many more issues that a social worker/counselor are trained to handle. Feel free to call me at 478-262-5708. Carol

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