Providing ideal patient care is the fundamental purpose behind Adaptive Design, an innovative systems approach that engages frontline staff in problem solving and focuses on improving patient care as part of everyone’s daily work. “More access to better care at a continually lower cost is the promise of doing Adaptive…
At least half the battle in making and sustaining process improvements is getting the entire team on board with a new workflow. One key to getting buy-in from staff is to clarify why changes are needed and what the consequences may be if the new processes aren’t followed. In a…
Perhaps no other departments in a hospital work as closely together as the OR and the sterile processing department, yet friction isn’t uncommon as both areas strive to meet service demands. Although the relationship between the two is unlikely to ever be free of tension, leaders of both departments increasingly…
Turnover time and first case on-time starts are a common problem in most ORs, so leaders are always seeking ideas for improvement. OR Manager recently spoke with two leaders who have had remarkable success in each of these areas. The Dartmouth-Hitchcock experience When the average turnover time (TOT) at…
Problems such as frequently running out of critical items, expired inventory, and secret stockpiling in the OR have become increasingly burdensome for surgeons, nursing staff, and hospital administration across the country. Wasteful supply chain spending marginalizes patient care and drives OR expenses out of control. “When the facility’s difficulties in…
Ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) are moving forward with quality reporting, adding a series of new measures this year while continuing to build a national database of performance levels on earlier measures. Now that they have experience with reporting safe surgery checklist use (ASC 6) and volume of selected procedures (ASC…
As payment models move from fee-for-service to value-based care, hospitals and healthcare systems are trying to reduce spending by 20% to 30% to maintain their budgets. Supply costs are usually the second largest expense after labor, and industry analysts predict they will take the top slot by 2020. In 2013,…
In the past, most hospitals automatically sought accreditation from the Joint Commission, but recent years have brought new players to the field, prompting hospital administrators to rethink that strategy. One relatively new player is DNV GL-Healthcare (DNV GL). Since achieving deeming authority from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services…