
Time and time again we hear of the importance of quality of care in our hospitals. However, what everyone needs to know is that quality of care goes beyond simply ensuring our patients get the proper level of help when they’re in our facilities. Because as we all know, low-quality healthcare in the long-term costs both time and money. Without a doubt, this isn’t an overnight fix. This is something that will take years of continuous work. Something we should be laying the foundation for now. So what steps should we be performing today to ensure this doesn’t become an issue down the road? While much of what’s left to be done is up to the government to implement the necessary policies and procedures to ensure success, there are things that can be done at the hospital level to prepare.
Set Benchmarks
Who are your main competitors, or which are the hospitals or systems similar to yours in size or operations who are blowing quality of care best practices out of the water? Write it down.
Next, do your research. Read, watch or talk to anything and everything you can get your hands on. Webinars, case studies, and scholarly papers to understand the approaches these hospitals have taken. What are they doing that your organization is not? Set your achievement benchmarks–both personal and organization so you have a clear cut definition of what success means.
Utilize Evidence-Based Learning
Evidence-based practices contain all the necessary information required to perform a task correctly. This is why it’s important to implement the use of evidence-based learning, and in some case intervention to ensure all staff members are performing procedures to standard and have a clear understanding as to why.
When you have, be sure to demonstrate improvement. This can be easily done through emails or better yet a company-wide newsletter showing off the improved stats.
Modernize Operations
We’ve said it once. We’ll say it again. We’ll say it until we’re blue in the face. Now is the time to modernize. All around us technological advancements are being made with no exceptions. Modernizing today means future-proofing for tomorrow.
But what does this have to do with population health? Well, you can be sure that as regulating bodies work to make improvements to the system there will come an onslaught of new quality policies along with amendments to old ones. Knowing this, having the tools in place to easily and quickly implement and disseminate these policies across your hospital or system will offer you a piece of mind manual process just can’t offer.
Further to these three points, hospitals and health systems should also focus on competent care and user experience to ensure confidence. A change in attitude is also important in this journey. More specifically, rather than seeing patients as work, look to them as partners to the betterment of healthcare. Commit to providing and using data to demonstrate and educate them on the effectiveness and safety of healthcare.