Research: Cost Reduction or Cost Containment in Health Care

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Introduction
Healthcare is under scrutiny to find cost reductions or cost containment. Available healthcare dollars are diminishing with an increased aging population and costs continually on the rise there is a need for healthcare institutions to become more accountable in how the dollars are spent. Canadian healthcare is 11.2% of gross domestic product in 2013 (Information, 2013)Pressure exists to maintain current service levels with decreasing budget dollars year after year. Healthcare institutions (administration and sometimes physicians) spend a substantial amount of time and energy yearly cutting dollars from existing budgets in order to provide a balanced budget. Savings come in the form of salaries (jobs), supply savings, and amount of services available to those in need. The need exists in the surgical environment to provide more thoughtful and meaningful savings by engaging physicians and nursing staff to assist in cost containment. The heart of the matter is the need to determine how to knowledge share cost information and engage clinical individuals in cost reduction or cost containment.
Literature Review
Cost containment or reduction opportunities are identified in various articles; going green (Taheri MD, Butz PhD, Griffes MHA, Morlock MBA, & Greenfield MD, 2000) (Wormer MD, et al., 2013), standardizing equipment (Brita-Rossi MS, et al., 1996), lean process (Collar MD, et al., 2012) (Aronsson & Abrahamsson, 2011), standardizing preference cards (Rappold, Van Roo, Di Martinelly, & Riane, 2011), and consignment of inventory (Brinkman, Seipel, & Juers, 2001)The above articles identify strategies that organizations can implement onetime cost containment, however do not address the factor of knowledge sharing. Research li...

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...n Impact on the Total Cost of Care. Annals of Surgery, 231(3), 432-435. Retrieved April 11, 2014, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421015/
Varkey, P., Murad, M. H., Braun, C., Grall, K. J., & Saoji, V. (2010, July 3). A review of cost-effectiveness, cost-containment and economics curricula in graduate medical education. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 16(6), 1055-1062. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2753.2009.01249.x
Wormer MD, B. A., Augenstien MD, V. A., Carpenter MHA, C. L., Burton BS, P. V., Yokeley BS, W. T., Prabhu MD, A. S., . . . Heniford MD, B. T. (2013, July). The Green Operating Room: Simple Changes to Reduce Cost and Our Carbon Footprint. The American Surgeon, 79(7), 666-671. Retrieved April 11, 2014, from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=uid&db=mnh&AN=23815997&site=eds-live&authtype=uid&user=ucw&password=ebsco

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