Hospital leadership: Keeping an open door
by Raymond Hino
My office in our hospital has two doors. One door leads to the inner office, including our receptionist area and our conference room. The second door leads to the entrance hallway of our hospital and has a sign posted on it. The sign reads "Please Use Other Door." That is not very welcoming.
The first door remains open most of the time, since I am proud of the fact that I have an open-door policy. However, it never occurred to me, until recently, that if I wanted to have a real open-door policy, I needed to keep the other door open.
I give credit to my staff at the hospital for the idea to keep this do...
Source: hospital impact - June 28, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Physician engagement: What not to do
by Jonathan H. Burroughs
Alignment of organization and physician interests depends upon successful physician engagement. Unfortunately, the traditional approaches of purchasing a physician practice or employing physicians have little, if anything, to do with alignment.
Thus, it seems instructive to share a few insights as to how NOT to engage physicians.
The following summarizes some key ways in which an organization can fail to engage physicians and lead to an unaligned environment with unnecessary conflict, division, strife and cost...
Treat a physician as you would all physicians
There is no such thing as physi...
Source: hospital impact - June 25, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Using healthcare's hidden curriculum for good
by Alicia Caramenico, FierceHealthcare
With medical school graduates beginning residencies next month, a recent article in Slate painted a harrowing picture for physicians-in-training.
In it, Danielle Ofri, M.D., an associate professor of medicine at NYU School of Medicine, describes the "hidden" medical school curriculum that sends future doctors into the field jaded and embittered. The lessons taught include healthcare hierarchies, prioritizing efficiency over patient care and the hypocrisy of doctor-patient communication.
The article raises concerns about how the hidden curriculum can hurt empathetic care. Those unin...
Source: hospital impact - June 21, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Aspirational marketing: Not just for luxury brands
by Jenn Riggle
When people think about aspirational marketing, they think of the glitzy conceptual ads for perfume, foreign cars and other luxury brands. You know the ones I mean--I grew up watching Chanel No. 5's "Share the Fantasy" ad with a woman daydreaming by the pool or Cadillac's "Red Blooded Luxury" that shows the next generation of Cadillac drivers.
Both ads are selling more than perfume or cars--they're selling a dream and way of life.
So how does this apply to hospitals?
Hospitals play an important role in the communities they serve, but no one really wants to have to use their services. It's sort of like h...
Source: hospital impact - June 21, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Process improvement: Strive to do better than your best
by Jeffrey Cohn
The dictionary defines best as "of the highest quality, excellence, or standing." From this comes best practices, which Wikipedia defines as "a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means."
The definition continues, "a 'best' practice can evolve to become better as improvements are discovered."
What happens to our drive for improvement when we hear a practice being referred to as best? There is a natural tendency to think only about the first part of the definition and assume our work is done. Couple that with the fact that many things referred to a...
Source: hospital impact - June 21, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Avoid 'cookbook medicine' to put patients first
by Nancy Peed
When Peach Regional Medical Center (PRMC) was recognized by the Georgia Hospital Association's Partnership for Health and Accountability Core Measures Honor Roll, we viewed the award as a testimony to the exemplary patient care our employees provide on a daily basis.
I am a firm believer that healthcare workers want to do the right thing. They are personally concerned with doing what is best for the patient, and are motivated to achieve positive outcomes. That innate desire is the basis for implementing core measures.
Implementing best practices often fails, however, when we give physicians and clinician...
Source: hospital impact - June 21, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Bringing humanity to the patient experience
by Jason A. Wolf
I intended my most recent Hospital Impact post to begin a dialogue on refocusing our conversations in healthcare. I worry that at times we get lost in the policies and process, programs and products and forget the most important "P" of all--people. I suggested in May that the "how" in healthcare trumps the "what" each and every day.
This too is evident in the conversations I continue to have with patients and family members, including the experiences my family is having as we continue our own healthcare journey.
As I speak to people in healthcare and observe it as a patient and researcher, I see a para...
Source: hospital impact - June 21, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Patient engagement will 'vastly' improve healthcare
by Dan Bowman, FierceHealthIT
Addressing a packed room at the Health Privacy Summit in Washington, D.C., this week, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park emphasized the importance of federal efforts to engage patients in their own healthcare.
"We're in the middle of a huge cultural shift to get patients access to their records," Park said. "Patient engagement--to quote Leonard Kish--may be the blockbuster drug of the 21st Century. This will vastly improve our healthcare system."
Park, who previously served as CTO for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, spoke at length about the evolution of the Blue Bu...
Source: hospital impact - June 13, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Best practices: Hospital social media wish list
by Nancy Cawley Jean
Don't let anyone kid you. Doing social media for a hospital is a lot of work. Some books and articles say it takes an hour a day; well, that's just not true--at least in my opinion.
In my role, I manage social media for a health system that includes five hospitals and a women's medicine practice. It's a job I absolutely love, but I won't tell you it's easy.
Through six Facebook, six Twitter, five Google+, three Pinterest pages and a YouTube channel, you can imagine the amount of time spent managing and monitoring. It is a full-time job. The disappointing part of that is there isn't always time to f...
Source: hospital impact - June 13, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Harnessing the power of healthcare crowdsourcing
by Kent Bottles
All hospital system leaders are looking for new tools to help them cope with the rapid transformation of the American healthcare delivery system brought on by the Affordable Care Act and the transition of the payment system from fee for service to global, value-based programs.
One tool that is increasingly mentioned as being underutilized by hospital systems is crowdsourcing. What is it? What is it not? What should healthcare leaders know about this disruptive technology?
I first came across the term by reading Jeff Howe's 2006 Wired magazine article titled "The Rise of Crowdsourcing." In this still usef...
Source: hospital impact - June 13, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Respect: The foundation for quality care
by Gary S. Kaplan
At Virginia Mason Medical Center, we understand respect must be shown every day, at all levels of our organization, for us to provide the best care and a perfect patient experience. If our physicians, nurses and other team members don't feel valued and respected, this will affect their ability to put the patient first in everything we do.
Lucian L. Leape, M.D., a founder of the National Patient Safety Foundation, has observed that disrespect among hospital employees is "a threat to patient safety because it inhibits collegiality and cooperation essential to teamwork, cuts off communication, undermines m...
Source: hospital impact - June 11, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Rebranding has hospitals playing the name game
by Alicia Caramenico, FierceHealthcare
What's in a name? For CaroMont Health the answer was the intention to promote community health--followed by a lot of ill-will. The Gastonia, N.C.-based health system last month landed in hot water with residents and veterans over its controversial "cheat death" wellness campaign and its name change from Gaston Memorial Hospital to CaroMont Regional Medical Center.
The Gaston County Veterans Council said the hospital's original name was a memorial to local veterans who died in World War II, the Charlotte Observer recently reported.
Ultimately the veterans and hospital officials reac...
Source: hospital impact - June 6, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Healthcare workers' perceived role and the patient experience
by Doug Della Pietra
Three men are laying bricks. Someone goes up to the first and asks, "What are you doing?" He replies, "Laying bricks." The inquisitor moves to the second and inquires, "Sir, what are you doing?" He responds, "Feeding my family."
Finally, the questioner asks the same question to the third man laying bricks who says, "I am working here with a great team! We are building a magnificent cathedral that many will visit and that will be here for years and years after I am gone."
How do people at your hospital answer the following question when asked, "What are you doing?" or "What do you do here?" How do y...
Source: hospital impact - June 6, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Patient engagement technology a must for ACO success
by Dan Bowman, FierceHealthIT
Technology that can engage patients so they can contribute to their own care will be crucial to the success of new payment models such as accountable care organizations, representatives from several healthcare organizations said during a panel discussion at the fourth annual Health Datapalooza conference in Washington, D.C. on Monday.
In particular, panelists focused on how technology must be able to leverage data to prompt more preventive behavior and to spur discussions between providers and patients.
"We need to get out of this notion of not telling people about the mistakes that they'...
Source: hospital impact - June 6, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Doctor-patient relationship: A meaningful marriage
by Anthony Cirillo
I recently returned from a trip to Ireland where we visited my wife's cousin, Father Sean, a Catholic priest in Northern Ireland. He is a great soul with a wonderful sense of humor. During the course of our many conversations, we asked him how he spent most of his time. His answer--hatchin, matchin, dispatchin!
Hatchin meant the sacrament of Baptism for newborns. Matchin meant the sacrament of Matrimony. And dispatchin alluded to the funerals he performs.
Of course that got me thinking about patient experience! (Really, you say!)
Think about it. Before the emphasis on patient experience, value-base...
Source: hospital impact - June 6, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
