Realising the Financial Value of Healthcare Improvement

Insights from our exclusive Member Masterclass with Dr Jane Evans

The ACHS Improvement Academy recently hosted a Member-exclusive Masterclass featuring Dr Jane Evans, Group Manager, Improvement and Experience at St Vincent’s Health Australia and Associate Professor Bernie Harrison, Improvement Academy Director on the topic of ‘Unlocking the Financial Benefits of Quality Improvement’. 

Global healthcare expenditure is estimated to have reached USD $10 trillion in 2024. Yet research consistently shows that around 30% of this activity is non-value adding (Policy Advice, 2021). Dr Evans shared insights from her extensive research exploring how healthcare improvement can not only lead to better outcomes in quality, safety, patient and staff experience, but also unlock the significant financial benefits. 

Waste in healthcare, both clinical and process waste, is endemic. It’s everywhere. 

- Dr Jane Evans 

Dr Evan's research revealed that despite a growing body of work on quality improvement, there is limited published evidence on how to measure the financial benefits of improvement. To address this gap, she developed a conceptual framework tested with hospitals in Australia, the UK, and the US. The findings showed that while hospitals often demonstrate the ability to quantify financial benefits (for example, in deficit recovery programs), this capability is rarely applied consistently to routine improvement initiatives. In other words, the issue is not so much a lack of knowledge, but a failure to embed financial thinking into improvement practice. 

Dr Evans emphasised that quality improvement is a powerful mechanism to release resources for reinvestment into patient care. She urged healthcare leaders and clinicians to: 

• Strengthen capability in measurement 

• Integrate financial considerations into all improvement work,  

• Address both technical and social barriers that prevent change. 
   

We know what the waste is, and we know how to reduce it. To get a different result, we need a shared vision, a shared work plan, and all partners in our system — governments, hospitals, and clinicians working together. 

- Dr Jane Evans 

If healthcare organisations want to reduce waste and deliver true value, they must measure both outcomes and costs and apply the same discipline to financial benefit realisation as they do to patient safety and clinical quality. Only then can improvement efforts deliver sustainable change, reduce waste, and unlock resources to reinvest in better care for patients and communities. 

We thank Dr Evans for her time and sharing insights on this important topic. You can watch the full recording or access more Masterclasses like these on our IA Learning Portal. Simply register to access these insightful discussions.