Case Study: St. Elizabeth Hospital achieves $5.2M in savings and top-5% patient satisfaction with Truven Health Analytics ActionOI

Labor Benchmarking Leads to $5.2 Million in Savings at St. Elizabeth Hospital

St. Elizabeth Hospital, a community hospital in Gonzales, LA (part of the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System), faced a significant challenge when contract labor costs climbed to nearly $1.5 million in 2007 — more than 7% of total spend — and staff surveys flagged care gaps tied to temporary staff. The hospital needed a way to benchmark its contract-labor use against peers and improve care consistency without harming financial health.

Using Truven Health’s ActionOI benchmarking and integrating contract-labor metrics into biweekly, monthly, and annual scorecards, St. Elizabeth cut clinical contract labor expense by 98.5%, saving $5.2 million, and lowered total labor expense as a percentage of net operating revenue by 21%. The reduction increased care consistency, moved patient satisfaction into the top 5% (top decile across inpatient, outpatient, and ED), improved team-member satisfaction, and produced savings reinvested in community services.

St. Elizabeth's Hospital

Jason Jobes

Director of Performance Excellence