The healthcare industry is no stranger to change, or risk, or regulation. In 2017, though, uncertainty has taken on a whole new meaning. It’s anyone’s guess which regulations will be eliminated, or if bad debts will increase due to lower coverage. Now is probably not the time to place your bets on what Congress and the new president will do. Instead, focus on these five ways to navigate uncertain times.
With patient experience surveys driving provider ratings, healthcare facilities have increasingly become more customer-centric and focused on hospitality to ensure patients are happy. Sadly, many healthcare organizations have discovered that a happy patient doesn’t necessarily make a healthy patient. So, what do you do when patients ask for something you either don’t have or advise against?
Whether you are pursuing a successful Joint Commission survey, an industry certification or performance-based incentives from the government, your employees’ willingness and ability to perform their jobs well are essential to your success as a healthcare organization. What if their jobs were easier? Applying the simple customer service principle known as The Effortless Experience™ to your healthcare organization could be the start of a great retention program.
For decades, Baby Boomers have proven to be powerful consumers and will continue to be the wealthiest generation for many years to come. Living an average of 10 years longer than the preceding generation while suffering from more chronic conditions that require medical oversight, Boomers’ demand for healthcare services is burgeoning. To capitalize on the trend, healthcare organizations should understand three keys to caring for the Boomer demographic.
I was recently asked, “What keeps you up at night?” Like a lot of people I know, my response was, “Everything.” Having been in the industry, I know that healthcare administrators are expected to adapt to constant regulatory and technological changes, but often are not given the resources to successfully do so. I am mindful of all the healthcare organization workers who are responsible for retrieving the right documents without a way of knowing if they are the most recent, accurate versions. Many healthcare organizations still use paper and shared intranet folders to manage their policies and procedures, but they are finding these means to be inadequate and unsustainable in keeping up with today’s strict, evolving compliance terms. Unfortunately, dealing with more change by implementing a new system is not something every CEO wants to tackle. In this post, we offer advice for convincing your CEO to change your P&P platform . . . so you can get some sleep.
Do Joint Commission surveys make your staff sick? Higher levels of stress and a visit from The Joint Commission (TJC) correlate, and occupational stress is a major contributing factor to employee illness. Beginning January 1, 2017, TJC hopes to make surveys easier for everyone. In a self-improvement initiative, TJC developed the new Survey Analysis for Evaluating Risk (SAFER) matrix to create a more simplified, clear, and relevant process for scoring surveys. If you haven’t explored the implications of the new methodology, we suggest you read this post and examine how your organization may be affected.
I love getting the newspaper every day. There’s something nostalgic about the smell and feel of it in my hands. It also makes really cute hats, but this is where my love for paper ends, and I insist on living in the Digital Age at work. When it comes to policies and procedures, we are no longer managing documents, but substantial amounts of crucial information. We need digitized policies and procedures to help us comply with ever-changing rules and regulations. That said, there are some policy management software companies and many organizations that are using Microsoft Word or [insert word processor here] to write and edit their P & Ps. This post reveals our discoveries and a possible solution.
On October 20, 2016, PolicyStat officially celebrated its tenth birthday. After commemorating the occasion with balloons, banners, and bagels, the nostalgia set in. As one might expect, the question of the day was: Where were YOU ten years ago? …
We’re kicking October off with a piece that examines how you can harness cloud computing and automated workflows to break free of the limitations of outdated systems that set good people and facilities up for failure, instead of improving audit…
Bad habits in healthcare facilities die hard. For example, up until 1996, patient privacy was loosely defined, and it wasn’t until the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) introduced new standards that the face of healthcare and how it…