Review (Patient Focused Care Association)最新文献

How you group your patients has a lot to do with your strategic goals. It is the first step in creating an "operations strategy" that fits with your external strategy. As the Concentric Rings diagram suggests, the rest of your organizational design is based on this key decision. In today's changing environment, answering the question "What do we want to do?" is the first step. Your answer to this question could drastically shift your priorities and influence your trade-offs during your Patient Focused restructuring efforts. It is, however, only the first step. More than ever before, driving your overall strategy into your restructured design will be the key to your success and will "make or break" your Patient Focused program.

Patient Focused Care is entirely consistent with clinical Product Line Management. In fact, as with Patient Focused Care and CQI/TQM, these two initiatives are better together than apart. To take advantage of this opportunity, you may have to modify your existing mechanism for Product Line Management. But the added benefits of more successful Product Line Management will make any modifications a temporary distraction. Down goes the perceived hurdle.

It is the critical, yet largely unknown aspects of Patient Focused care team design--the "how" of a design process--which make LRMC's "Care Pairs" a ground-breaking innovation rather than just a distinctive-sounding name. Unfortunately, many hospital leaders of Patient Focused Care programs know the "what" of LRMC's "Care Pairs" but very little, if anything, about this "how." To create Patient Focused care teams which are "right" for your own institution, you must quantify the Costs of Continuity, Competency and Compartmentalization and their associated benefits. Without these informed trade-offs, you and your hospital will be forced to live with someone else's Patient Focused care team design. In summary, it is what you don't know about LRMC's "Care Pairs," not what you do know, that is important to your Patient Focused Care program. Hospitals just beginning to implement Patient Focused Care must understand this "how" if they are to design effective care teams which optimize the performance of their initial unit(s) within their unique environments. Hospitals like LRMC with established Patient Focused Care units must also periodically draw upon this "how" or they face the very real danger of having their Patient Focused care team design(s) become outdated, less effective and eventually detrimental. Or, said another way: "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over those who cannot." Mark Twain. "An out-of-date Patient Focused hospital has no advantage over those which remain unrestructured." The PFCA. The three critical aspects of Patient Focused care team design explored in this article are just the tip of the iceberg.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Often, even before the vision for the restructured hospital is completed, talk begins about "which area to implement first" and "how many areas to tackle." Certainly, there are many considerations in making these decisions such as, the political mood with physicians and staff, synergy with changes already on the books, areas which are vacant and easily renovated, and more. However, these decisions may limit the alternatives for your Economic Change Strategy. They may even implicitly set it for you. And, as such, they should be taken very seriously because they directly impact the when and how much of your economic gains from restructuring. Want to get the most economic gains from restructuring? Define your Performance, Operational, Cultural and Economic Change Strategies and keep them in sync. And you won't be betting the farm that chance will do that for you.

Those of us who have chosen to embark on this journey into the world of Patient Focused management sometimes refer to our experience as a wild roller coaster ride. It is probably an accurate analogy since many of us have found the amplitude of the highs and lows to be quite extreme. Most of us came prepared with what we thought was a great deal of knowledge about management and leadership in an acute care setting. As we have moved through this process, we have found ourselves starting over and beginning to accept completely new paradigms. Although this has been, for many of us, the greatest challenge of our careers, I believe it has also been the greatest opportunity for growth.

In summary, it is important to define the "right" set of performance indicators to monitor the success of your Patient Focused restructuring program. Keep these indicators to the vital few--those reflecting the hospital's quality, service, environment and economic performance--rather than falling into the potential trap of the trivial many. Be sure to define many of these indicators in the customers' terms, not necessarily your own. Your Patient Focused program will mature across four primary eras--The Vision, The Plan, The Reality and The Journey. Several important aspects of your performance indicators must evolve along with it if they are to facilitate rather than hinder progress. This should happen naturally. However, it is always wise to keep an eye on these evolutions to ensure they aren't stifled by traditional paradigms, lingering biases and lack of attention. Defining and evolving the "right" performance indicators for your Patient Focused Care program will not only provide valid measures of success, but actually contribute to greater success as well!

These six lessons learned for greater success with your Patient Focused communications can help keep your cultural change process in sync with your operational change process. Of course, there are other key elements of the former, including: formal Patient Focused educational programs; restructured Human Resources "systems" (e.g., job descriptions and compensation programs); and migration toward greater organizational empowerment and more self-directed work teams. Still, your Patient Focused communications campaign will spearhead the cultural change process. As such, it will have the opportunity to make the very first impact. Basically, your communications can make or break your Patient Focused Care program from Day One. It's up to you--learn the lessons learned by others and your organization may follow the words of Marx rather than those of Brand: "Workers of the world, unite (on behalf of your Patient Focused Care program)!" Karl Marx.p6 "Workers of the world, fan out (in formation against your Patient Focused Care program)!" Stewart Brand.