Case Study: Mercy achieves $1.2M savings and 12% improvement in block utilization with SAP HANA

Revolutionizing Perioperative Services Using SAP® Solutions and the Epic EHR System

Mercy, a Saint Louis–based health system with about 40,000 employees and $4.3 billion in revenue, faced rising perioperative costs and slow, preaggregated analytics that hampered scheduling and care‑delivery improvements. Because surgery and perioperative services are the highest inpatient cost, Mercy needed faster insights to provide more cost‑effective care to more patients.

Mercy integrated SAP HANA and SAP BusinessObjects (BI and Explorer) with its Epic EHR to deliver real‑time dashboards and self‑service analytics, boosting data loads to ~120,000 rows/sec and expanding analysis from weeks to years. The initiative delivered over $1.2 million in first‑year savings on total knee replacements, a 12% improvement in block utilization, elimination of unnecessary processes (such as certain autotransfusion device use), reduced complications, and a roadmap for predictive/prescriptive SAP HANA applications.

Mercy

Betty Jo Rocchio

Vice President of Perioperative Performance Acceleration