Make empowered front-line staff a healthcare reality

by Thomas Dahlborg Imagine you are working on the frontlines of a large healthcare system. You are a clinician (i.e., physician, nurse, medical assistant or other), your department is understaffed and you are obligated to achieve productivity quotas (see more and more patients to ensure revenue is generated for the system). Then you learn your healthcare system is implementing a hiring freeze so the relief you were expecting (the opportunity to breathe and use the bathroom between patient visits) will not be realized. Now imagine you are again a clinician on the frontlines of a large healthcare system and you have recently learned the level of stress associated with trying to ensure patient safety, optimal outcomes and better patient experience while also meeting productivity quotas will worsen due to hiring freezes as well as the system offering early retirement incentives to hundreds of employees in an effort to improve the bottom line. Let's continue imagining. You are again a clinician on the frontlines of a large healthcare system, you are pressured by the system to ensure productivity, staffing levels are already below what is safe for patients, your stress level and that of your peers has reached critically high levels, you have peers suffering from depression and not seeking treatment, you have others considering leaving the healthcare workforce, and others are at their breaking point. You now learn the system is implementing layoffs to create "financial stabil...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs