MultiCare Health System Advances Stewardship with Premier’s Stanson Health

Key Takeaways:

• Hospitals face rising costs and resource pressures, highlighting the need for more efficient use of medications, labs and imaging to support high-quality care.
• MultiCare Health System partnered with Premier to implement the Stanson Health stewardship app, which delivers clinically specific, financially conscious nudges within the ordering workflow that are designed to avoid alert fatigue and preserve provider autonomy.
• MultiCare achieved a 26 percent acceptance rate on recommendations, saving an average of $179 per accepted recommendation and approximately $81 per discharge, strengthening margins and lowering costs for patients.

Hospitals are under increasing pressure to deliver high-quality care while managing limited financial and operational resources. Rising demand, supply challenges and care complexity have made it increasingly important for health systems to ensure that clinical resources are used efficiently and appropriately.

Traditional clinical decision support (CDS) tools play an essential role in promoting safety and adherence to care pathways. However, many organizations are now exploring ways to enhance these tools by adding insights that also support operational efficiency and financial stewardship.

Precision Stewardship in the Workflow

MultiCare Health System, a 13-hospital healthcare system based in Tacoma, Washington, sought to address these challenges by embedding stewardship directly into the point of care. Partnering with Premier, MultiCare implemented the Stanson Health stewardship app, which delivers real-time nudges inside the provider’s ordering workflow.

What sets this stewardship solution apart is its design to balance clinical guidance with provider autonomy:

• Clinical specificity: The app evaluates patient context such as lab values, diagnoses or creatinine levels to ensure recommendations are relevant and appropriate.
• Alert fatigue prevention: By selectively intervening only when wasteful or non-indicated orders are made, the app aims to prevent unnecessary interruptions that frustrate clinicians.
• Financial stewardship: The solution surfaces cost considerations when multiple clinically acceptable options exist, helping providers weigh value without compromising patient needs.

All rules and recommendations are reviewed and approved by MultiCare’s CDS governance committee, aligning interventions with system-wide priorities and practice standards. Through this collaborative model, clinicians retain full autonomy to accept or override recommendations, while the health system ensures stewardship is clinically sound and financially responsible.

Measurable Results

MultiCare has seen strong provider engagement and tangible financial outcomes. In its initial rollout, limited to just 20 users, four medications and three lab tests, the stewardship app delivered:

• 26 percent overall acceptance rate, including 23 percent for medications and 36 percent for labs, placing MultiCare in the top quartile compared to similar systems.
• Average savings of $179 per accepted recommendation, delivering significant impact even in the pilot phase.
• Approximately $81 saved per discharge, benefiting both hospital margins and patients’ out-of-pocket costs.

These outcomes show how targeted nudges can reduce unnecessary costs without compromising care quality or overburdening providers.

Looking Ahead

Building on these results, MultiCare is expanding the use of Premier’s Stanson Health stewardship app to more users and broader categories, including radiology. The health system expects its savings to grow as additional medications and tests are added.

This collaboration illustrates how health systems can evolve beyond traditional CDS to embrace stewardship that is clinically precise, financially conscious and provider friendly. By embedding actionable insights into the workflow, MultiCare is creating a more sustainable care model that benefits clinicians, patients and the broader healthcare system.

For more:

• Discover how Premier’s Stanson Health stewardship app can help your healthcare organization reduce waste and lower costs. Connect with us to learn more.