Healthcare expense management experts release white paper on shared services

Healthcare Purchasing News, March, 2005

"Rapid advances in technology and cuts in Medicare and Medicaid will force healthcare providers to reconfigure their traditional approaches to reign-in expenses", according to Joe Colonna, CEO of Jackson, NJ based Strategic Initiatives In Healthcare, LLC. "To enhance their current practices, providers are going to have to revisit the concept of 'shared services' which started in the early 1970's, but fizzled simply because there was not the same level of urgency behind the need to focus on expense reduction that there is today." While many" volume purchasing organizations currently in existence are considered "shared services" themselves, the expansion of other services to allow providers to pool their resources to slash operating expenses has been a relatively dormant concept for nearly thirty years.

Recently, according to Colonna, pockets of providers are feeling their way by establishing such models on a limited basis. SIH has prepared a "white paper" entitled Shared Services--Back to the Future, which chronicles the history of the concept and outlining its potential as a realistic approach in today's environment. For more information and a copy of paper go to www.SIHealthcare.com