How Ardent Health Used Real-Time Decision Support to Cut Waste

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Key Takeaways:

• Ardent Health sought to curb low-value care while maintaining clinician trust and supporting high-quality patient outcomes.
• The health system's pilot of Premier's Stanson Health Stewardship solution tripled its initial financial success metric, achieving average savings of $97 per admission and growing it to $149 per admission following broader system adoption.
• The initiative supported adoption across diverse sites and established a scalable cost-containment framework.

As hospitals contend with mounting cost pressures, reducing low-value care has emerged as both a clinical and financial imperative. Inpatient encounters may represent a fraction of total volume, but they drive a disproportionate share of cost and clinical variation. For health systems managing dozens of hospitals and hundreds of care locations, tackling these challenges requires more than oversight. It demands actionable, real-time insights that empower providers to make smarter decisions at the point of care.

That challenge landed squarely with Susan Hughes, Vice President of Case Management at Ardent Health, a leading provider of healthcare services with 30 hospitals in six states and 280 care locations. Hughes and her team recognized the need for a solution purpose-built to drive consistency and reduce variation, and Premier's Stanson Health Stewardship solution emerged as the clear fit. Following rollout, it exceeded the health system's expectations in both impact and scope.

Starting With a Clear Goal and the Right Partner

Ardent Health became an early adopter of Stewardship, launching a pilot with the hospitalist team at its UT Health East Texas facility. The bar for early success was intentionally modest: $32.50 in average savings per admission and positive provider feedback. In just 90 days, the numbers that followed made Stewardship's value unmistakable.

"We didn't just meet the goal - we exceeded it," Hughes said. "We achieved savings of $97 per admission."

The early success validated Ardent Health's belief that reducing low-value care could be done without disrupting workflows or undermining clinician autonomy. It also served as the catalyst for broader adoption.

"That success was a catalyst for growing our partnership," Hughes explained. "We expanded adoption of Stewardship to include additional facilities, and as the positive results continued, so we ultimately rolled out the program across all of our hospitals."

From Proof of Concept to Systemwide Opportunity

Ease of implementation was one of the defining factors in Ardent Health's ability to scale Stewardship across a diverse system, ranging from critical access hospitals to large tertiary centers.

"Premier made rollout easy for us because the strategy is baked into the go-live process," said Hughes. "We're thrilled with the return on investment."

As Stewardship adoption grew, so too did its impact. Average savings per admission increased to $149, effectively tripling Ardent Health's original financial success metric.

Then, an unexpected event provided even more validation. During a temporary system outage caused by a cyberattack, Stewardship nudges were paused. Within a month, costs began to rise again.

"It reinforced to hospital leaders and to the finance team that the savings we were seeing were real," Hughes said. "Being a good steward of resources is a constant effort."

The experience underscored a key insight: Sustained behavior change requires continuous, real-time reinforcement - not one-time education.

Scaling Success Across the Enterprise

For Ardent Health, Stewardship's impact extended beyond cost savings. The data and insights generated by the platform became a foundation for collaboration among hospital leaders, C-suite executives, physician advisors and frontline clinicians.

"This is the information we sit down with senior leaders and physicians to really sort through," Hughes said. "It sparks conversation, ideas and collaboration."

Today, Ardent Health is using Stewardship data to incorporate nudge data into quality metrics and performance incentives at select hospitals. Looking back on the journey, Hughes is clear about what made the difference.

"Premier isn't a vendor - they're a partner," she said. "And a good partner listens, shares ideas and works alongside you."

For more:

Ardent Health results show what's possible with Stewardship in place. Learn more about how it can help your organization reduce low-value care and cut costs.