Broadlane Launches Innovative Service to Help Hospitals Cope with Nurse Shortages.

Business & Medical Editors

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 25, 2002

Broadlane Inc., a leading provider of total cost management services to the healthcare industry, announced today that it is launching an innovative service to help hospitals and health systems address rising nurse-staffing costs. The service, which Broadlane has been piloting with several of its existing health system customers over the past six months, focuses specifically on agency costs associated with finding and placing high quality temporary and traveling nurses to fill open positions at hospitals.

Using a variety of Broadlane-developed techniques, including sourcing strategies, hospitals involved in the pilot program expect to see their costs for this growing expense area decline by more than 18 percent in the coming year.

"These cutting-edge initiatives further demonstrate why Broadlane increasingly is recognized for its total cost management approach to helping large integrated delivery systems," according to David Ricker, Broadlane's chief operating officer. "Our comprehensive view of hospitals' cost structure, coupled with our problem solving capabilities and relentless focus on tangible performance improvement for our customers, means that we will continue to develop effective solutions to hospitals' pressing problems in the supply chain and beyond."

With the benefits of its pilot program now confirmed, Broadlane is making this service available to all its existing customers, as well as to new customers. The service includes sourcing contract nurse agencies and negotiating highly competitive contract pricing on behalf of customers. If customers require, Broadlane also provides ongoing vendor management along with contract management services.

With the nationwide shortage of qualified nurses showing no signs of abating, hospitals everywhere have turned increasingly to nurse staffing agencies to fill vacancies with temporary or traveling staff. At the same time, costs have risen exponentially as contract nurse wage rates have risen to attract qualified individuals for short time periods. In addition, agency mark-ups and profits have ratcheted up. Hospitals often commission scores of agencies to fill the same positions, further driving up costs as the agencies compete for the same candidates.

Based on its successful experience in countering cost increases in other hyper-inflationary services, Broadlane applied its advanced strategic sourcing capabilities to rationalize supply and demand and thus to offset its customers' rising costs of contract nursing. Broadlane collaborated in the pilot program with hospital nursing leadership to understand staffing needs at scores of hospitals, identify root causes of shortages, map staffing processes, develop detailed quality and service-level requirements, evaluate agency capabilities, create an RFP, analyze proposals, develop and execute negotiating strategies, synthesize results and make recommendations to hospital management. Hundreds of qualified agencies participated in the competitive bidding process.

"Although some of the hospitals we worked with in our pilot program have pioneered their own innovative strategies to attract and retain qualified nurses who will be with them for the long term, they will continue to need to fill some open positions with temporary and travel nurses," says Shuja Ali, M.D., Broadlane's head of consulting services and the leader of the pilot program. "That number has risen considerably in recent years. Broadlane's effort already is allowing the hospitals to use these resources much more economically. The Broadlane team also is developing other tools that will allow hospitals to manage this area much more effectively in the future."

"Sourcing nurse staffing agencies requires specialized skills and dedicated resources," said Ali. "The knowledge and experience required to conduct a project of this complexity are quite scarce, and nursing executives are primarily focused on meeting their patient care and administrative duties. An effort of this intensity without the collaboration of sourcing experts, in combination with hospital chief nursing executives, is simply beyond the reach of nearly every hospital system we've seen."

For Further Information About Broadlane's Contract Nurse Staffing Offering

Contact Dr. Shuja Ali, head of consulting services, at 415-844-7310.

About Broadlane

Broadlane delivers total cost management to the healthcare industry, allowing hospitals to reduce operational costs while maintaining or enhancing patient care and clinician satisfaction. Broadlane provides contracting, clinical, operational and technology services, as well as outsourcing. Among the companies that focus on cost management within the healthcare supply chain, only Broadlane offers this total cost management approach.

Broadlane customers include leading healthcare providers such as Kaiser Permanente, Tenet Healthcare Corporation, Universal Health Services, Continuum Health Partners, The Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati, Kindred Healthcare, Community Health Systems, U.S. Oncology and others. Broadlane counts among its customers more than 490 acute care hospitals, more than 1,500 sub-acute care facilities and thousands of physician practices. Broadlane has offices in San Francisco and Oakland, Calif.; Cincinnati; Dallas; and New York City. For more information, visit www.broadlane.com.