Who is iHS.

Who are we?

This team of clinical experts developed and implemented a cutting-edge program that saved a multi-hospital system over 21,000 days with cost savings over $75 million in less than three years. We have experience in Patient Centered Care, Care Management, Inpatient Length of Stay Management, Readmission Avoidance, Community Health, Value Based Care, Utilization Management, and Clinical Documentation Integrity with a specialized niche and proven success in expediting post-acute authorization. Innovative thinkers with demonstrated capabilities in assessing, analyzing, operationalizing, and evaluating opportunities related to cost savings.

Our Story

Every patient deserves the right care at the right time. Having witnessed my elderly father waiting in ED hallways because there was “no room at the inn,” I thought we must do better for the patients we serve. How do we deal with the hospital capacity restraints? With so many external factors impacting hospitals and hospital systems—from bed availability to staffing challenges—I have demonstrated that it is within our control to better manage hospital throughput and improve the overall patient and team member experience.

What started with a spark of an idea to manage this pervasive problem, became the compelling reason to start my business. First, I sought to understand the biggest contributor to avoidable hospital days. An extensive literature review confirmed that awaiting health plan authorization for Skilled Nursing Facility (SNF) placement is a common contributor to acute hospital discharge delays and increased length of stay (LOS) (Cai et al., 2020; Menger et al., 2017; Smith et al., 2017; Sorensen et al., 2020).

To tackle this critical, widespread problem in healthcare today, I implemented a successful, hospital based post-acute authorization program at a large sixteen hospital system. The results were published in the Journal of Case Management, December 2022. Furthermore, our best practices were presented at the 2023 and 2024 national American Case Management Association (ACMA) conferences. This publicity cultivated significant interest across the country with several distinguished healthcare systems pursuing our knowledge of how to implement this program.

Why is this work so important?

Patients who experience discharge delays are at increased risk for hospital-associated deconditioning, delirium, and hospital-acquired infections. Since inpatient hospital rehabilitation services are often not equipped to provide daily physical/occupational/speech therapy, delays in discharge can also deny patients access to needed rehabilitation services (Cai, et al., 2020). Combined, these factors result in higher mortality and morbidity among patients who are medically ready yet unable to discharge to the most appropriate level of care in a timely manner (Rosman et al., 2015).