Reducing Costs and Length of Stay Through Tech Efficiencies

By Matt Phillion

As healthcare organizations try to find ways to improve efficiency in the face of challenges like rising costs and a shrinking workforce, much of the discussion centers around how to best leverage technology, particularly in areas of administration and data. Over the past two years, St. Luke’s University Health Network has been utilizing AI and data to reduce length of stay, improve operational efficiency in how patients are transferred to post-acute care facilities, and reduce operational costs.

They’ve been able to:

• Reduce average length of stay by 0.3 days across its 11 acute care hospitals, resulting in 10-14 more available beds per day.
• Reduce total patient days by 7,873 days.
• Identify nearly $8 million in savings which they are able to reallocate toward patient care initiatives, staffing shortages, and more.

We chatted with Russ Graney, founder and CEO of Aidin, whose case management and referral platform was leveraged by St. Luke’s to implement these changes.

PSQH: To set the scene, what challenges were St. Luke’s contending with that inspired looking at tools such as AI to address length of stay and improve operational efficiency?

Graney: St. Luke’s University Health Network is one of the best-performing health systems in the country, consistently delivering excellent outcomes on metrics like length of stay.

When I first met Joanna Lucas, Vice President of Care Management, and her leadership team, they were on a mission to maximize bed capacity across their 11 hospitals to better meet the community’s demand. While their care teams knew there were inefficiencies in the discharge workflows that would require intense coordination across sites, they didn’t have the detailed view into day-to-day operations needed to pinpoint and address the specific areas slowing down patient transitions.

This challenge motivated Joanna and the St. Luke’s team to explore a more advanced case and referral management platform. By embracing this technology, St. Luke’s has been able to enhance patient flow, reduce the average length of stay, and ensure each patient transitions to the most suitable care setting—all while supporting its overarching mission to improve healthcare for its community.

PSQH: Can we talk a bit about how the technology works for an organization like St. Luke’s? What pain points does it target? How is it best leveraged?

Graney: St. Luke’s uses Aidin as the driving technology behind finding patients all the services they need as they leave the hospital or clinic, integrating smoothly with their existing systems like Epic to streamline patient transitions and ensure everyone stays on the same page.

Aidin’s technology directly addresses the core challenges case managers face: reducing repetitive data entry, simplifying communication with post-acute care providers, and ensuring that patients are matched with facilities that fit both their clinical and insurance needs. By standardizing and automating these processes, St. Luke’s can focus on providing a seamless care experience for their patients. St. Luke’s care management team uses this technology to standardize workflows across its hospitals, gaining real-time insights and transparency at every stage of the discharge process. This ultimately enhances their community impact and ability to provide the best quality patient experience.

PSQH: What impact does improving patients’ understanding of the quality of post-acute care they’re being discharged to have on outcomes? How can hospitals leverage improved education for patients to make forward leaps in this area?

Graney: When patients understand the quality and benefits of the post-acute care they’re transitioning to, it helps them feel empowered and engaged in their recovery. At St. Luke’s, this translates to patients and their families making more informed choices, which has a positive ripple effect on their recovery outcomes. The hospital’s care teams can leverage this understanding by providing clear, accessible information on each post-acute provider, helping patients and their families make choices that align with their recovery needs and goals. This patient-centered approach doesn’t just enhance satisfaction; it has also helped reduce patient days in the hospital, further strengthening St. Luke’s commitment to quality care and community impact.

PSQH: When it comes to finding top-quality providers for post-acute care, how can data and AI be used in that search? How does finding the right care post-discharge help alleviate issues like readmissions?

Graney: Data and AI are invaluable in connecting patients with high-quality post-acute care providers. At St. Luke’s, Aidin’s technology sorts through performance data, patient needs, and provider metrics to enable each patient to understand which providers can meet their specific requirements. This proactive approach helps patients receive the right care in the right setting, dramatically reducing the risk of hospital readmission. By leveraging this technology, St. Luke’s care management team has evolved to provide a more thoughtful and tailored transition experience that supports better outcomes, giving patients and families peace of mind as they move forward in their care journey.

PSQH: What are the risks of not taking a proactive stance to connecting patients with that level of care after discharge?

Graney: When patients aren’t proactively connected to the right post-acute care, hospitals face multiple challenges: longer patient stays, lower satisfaction, and increased readmission rates. These risks are unacceptable for St. Luke’s, a leader that is deeply committed to patient-centered care. Without careful planning and data-driven referrals, patients may end up in settings that don’t fully meet their needs, leading to complications, readmissions, and diminished patient trust. By actively managing these transitions, St. Luke’s not only improves patient outcomes but also builds a more resilient healthcare community.

PSQH: How can AI help prevent miscommunication that could lead to worse outcomes or increased numbers of errors?

Graney: AI-enabled technology can support care management teams and other front-line hospital workers who are overburdened with administrative tasks. Miscommunication can be one of the biggest obstacles in care transitions, and getting it right is crucial for health systems like St. Luke’s. Aidin’s technology simplifies, centralizes, and organizes communication between hospital teams and post-acute providers, minimizing the risk of human error. This system helps ensure that everyone—care teams, post-acute providers, and patients—can access up-to-date information in real time, reducing the chances of missed details or misaligned instructions.

For St. Luke’s, this technology-driven clarity supports safer care transitions and a smoother, more coordinated experience for both patients and care providers, keeping the entire team aligned throughout each patient’s journey.

PSQH: As more care moves outside the hospital walls, how can organizations break down silos and ensure that hospitals and insurers have aligned incentives?

Graney: With healthcare increasingly extending beyond hospital walls, the need for alignment across care teams, payers, and providers is more critical than ever. St. Luke’s has found that data transparency is key to bringing these groups together. By making data on quality and outcomes readily accessible and relevant to providers and payers, organizations like St. Luke’s can foster an environment where everyone is working toward the same goal: improving patient care while managing costs. This shared vision ensures that each step in the patient’s journey aligns with the broader goals of the hospital and insurers, breaking down silos and supporting high-quality, value-based care for the community. Aidin’s technology connects health systems, payers, and post-acute providers in an open marketplace, enabling them to collaborate to improve patient outcomes, reduce hospital stays, minimize prior authorization delays, streamline compliance form processing, and ensure there is two-way communication.

PSQH: What does the future look like in terms of embedding this type of technology in everyday care?

Graney: The future of case management technology is promising, with the potential for even deeper integration and predictive analytics that will allow hospitals to be one step ahead in managing resources and anticipating patient needs. For St. Luke’s, this means that each step in the patient journey can become more personalized and efficient, offering patients a smoother transition and higher-quality care. As AI capabilities evolve, this technology can better support forward-thinking health systems in delivering more efficient, compassionate care.

PSQH: Where would you like to see this type of program evolve to in the next few years?

Graney: Our team is always focused on the future, exploring how we can expand this technology’s capabilities to do even more for patients and the dedicated teams who care for them in even more impactful ways. For St. Luke’s, this could mean greater automation of referrals, using predictive insights to anticipate each patient’s unique needs—drawing from medical, social, and behavioral data—and automatically triggering essential workflows.

Aidin continues to invest in supporting a growing range of transition types and patient needs, including coordination for transportation and non-emergency medical transport (NEMT). As data-sharing becomes more seamless, this technology can empower healthcare organizations to make meaningful progress toward a more connected, compassionate healthcare experience for everyone they serve.

Matt Phillion is a freelance writer covering healthcare, cybersecurity, and more. He can be reached at matthew.phillion@gmail.com.