Staff ideas help save money at hospital

? A Newton hospital has been recognized for cutting costs after a series of staff suggestions helped save the facility $1.7 million over the past year.

The Kansas Hospital Association recently gave Newton Medical Center the 2009 Thomas R. Sipe Challenge award for its “Show Me the Money” campaign.

Newton’s vice president for physician services, Val Gleason, said administrators turned to the workers for ideas to survive the economic slowdown. Hospital spokesman Barrick Wilson said the ideas allowed them to save money, protect patient care and “protect the integrity of the work force by not having to have any layoffs.”

Gleason said hospital staff submitted 121 ideas and officials used 62 of those. The ideas included surgeons and operating room staff reviewing the supplies kept on hand and finding they were wasting several thousand dollars with redundant items.

Next up: a second initiative, this one called “Show Me the Change,” which will focus on ways to improve how the hospital does certain things and evaluates performance.