Insight
Insight
Tim Hallock, MS, quality facilitator at St. Marys Hospital & Medical Center in Madison, WI, shares, in his own words, his opinions on how quality specialists can make a critical impact in health care systems this year:
1. We need a "defect-reduction" mentality. It has to be our business to create a safe environment where people come for care. This goes further than medical errors. It goes into wait times and insufficient explanations of procedures or possible side effects of medications and procedures.
2. Our patients should experience a seamless system of care across the continuum.
3. We should be looking at the whole value stream to patients. Looking just at the part that affects our jobs isn’t going to work anymore.
4. For those of us who have "mutated" from the old quality assurance function, looking at the whole continuum will be a stretch.
5. Health care systems have been too busy keeping information to ourselves. We should open information to patients without breaching confidentiality.
6. We should be talking with our patients about data so that health care becomes more about patients being in control.
7. Report cards are big, but they’re only good if they have measures that help us to improve outcomes. For example, having the FBI’s number on all phones is different from figuring out how to achieve the outcome of preventing abduction of kids in our facilities.
8. We need to figure out what really matters to patients. Like how well could they get control of their lives after hip replacement surgery? That’s what providers and hospitals need to know. And yes, the methods are not the most valid and reliable yet. We have some valid, reliable measures such as length of stay and financial results, and they drive what we do. But are they really telling us if our work is doing what the patient needs?
9. Health care systems have to start operating 24-7-365 (24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year). Delaying a patient’s physical therapy because "we don’t have therapists here on holidays" is unacceptable.
10. It’s time to bridge the gap between known science and patient care practice.
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