Psot 2: Atul Gawande
So for the first semester of junior year our schedules are pretty Health Management and Policy intensive. All of my classes this semester are major classes; they include Health Management, Health finance, a pre-practicum, and a Health Policy class. It is always nice when you can connect and overlap information that you learn in one class with information from another.
That being said in our Health Management when we had talked about how CEOs measure good work on the administrative side, a common assessment used is a score card. In Chapter Four of Reaching Excellence in Healthcare they reference a score card that the management team uses at Saint Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, MO. The management team uses the score card to "benchmark performance" of the team, to see the excellence being preformed by their staff. Before making any changed or implementing change the team must have the knowledge of what is actually being done at their organization. At Saint Luke's the score card had a scale of number 1-10 and many different sections and subsections. Some of the things the team scored on were "Clinical & Administrative Quality", "Customer Satisfaction", and "Growth & Financial Development". The chapter talks about how historically this is the best way an organization can recognize excellence or the absence of.
Later in the week when we got to our Health Policy class where we watched a ted talk, How Do We Heal Medicine?, by Atul Gawande, a surgeon and public health surgeon. He talks about the amazing things done in the United States healthcare systems but the lack of efficiency. He begins talking about how two factors of a good system are 1. recognizing a problem and 2. finding a solution. For him as a surgeon, he thought of the idea of a checklist. He thought maybe if he implemented a checklist to remember the small and large parts of the procedure he would help cut the rate of complications in surgery. He had broken it up into separate steps and different categories. He said, "And we had a mix of dumb stuff on there -- making sure an antibiotic is given in the right time frame because that cuts the infection rate by half -- and then interesting stuff, because you can't make a recipe for something as complicated as surgery.Instead, you can make a recipe for how to have a team that's prepared for the unexpected. And we had items like making sure everyone in the room had introduced themselves by name at the start of the day, because you get half a dozen people or more who are sometimes coming together as a team for the very first time that day that you're coming in." This was the most important connection I made to the reading in our management class earlier that week. We often talk about the difference in the administration side versus the physician side. But when Gawande talked about learning everyone in the rooms names it showed that communication and growth is important on more than just the management side. He goes on to talk about the success rates he saw in the 7 different hospital ORs he implemented this in. "We found that after they adopted it the complication rates fell 35 percent. It fell in every hospital it went into. The death rates fell 47 percent. This was bigger than a drug." When relating back to what chapter 4 said in management we see how tracking scorecards or checklists continues to be historically one of the best ways to improve efficiency and be consistence in all parts of the hospital.
Sorry that this is a but of lengthy post but I found the overlap between the classes important and sort of exciting to see the management work in other cases too!
Check out Atul Gawande's ted talk here: https://www.ted.com/talks/atul_gawande_how_do_we_heal_medicine/transcript
Thanks for reading!
Grace
That being said in our Health Management when we had talked about how CEOs measure good work on the administrative side, a common assessment used is a score card. In Chapter Four of Reaching Excellence in Healthcare they reference a score card that the management team uses at Saint Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, MO. The management team uses the score card to "benchmark performance" of the team, to see the excellence being preformed by their staff. Before making any changed or implementing change the team must have the knowledge of what is actually being done at their organization. At Saint Luke's the score card had a scale of number 1-10 and many different sections and subsections. Some of the things the team scored on were "Clinical & Administrative Quality", "Customer Satisfaction", and "Growth & Financial Development". The chapter talks about how historically this is the best way an organization can recognize excellence or the absence of.
Later in the week when we got to our Health Policy class where we watched a ted talk, How Do We Heal Medicine?, by Atul Gawande, a surgeon and public health surgeon. He talks about the amazing things done in the United States healthcare systems but the lack of efficiency. He begins talking about how two factors of a good system are 1. recognizing a problem and 2. finding a solution. For him as a surgeon, he thought of the idea of a checklist. He thought maybe if he implemented a checklist to remember the small and large parts of the procedure he would help cut the rate of complications in surgery. He had broken it up into separate steps and different categories. He said, "And we had a mix of dumb stuff on there -- making sure an antibiotic is given in the right time frame because that cuts the infection rate by half -- and then interesting stuff, because you can't make a recipe for something as complicated as surgery.Instead, you can make a recipe for how to have a team that's prepared for the unexpected. And we had items like making sure everyone in the room had introduced themselves by name at the start of the day, because you get half a dozen people or more who are sometimes coming together as a team for the very first time that day that you're coming in." This was the most important connection I made to the reading in our management class earlier that week. We often talk about the difference in the administration side versus the physician side. But when Gawande talked about learning everyone in the rooms names it showed that communication and growth is important on more than just the management side. He goes on to talk about the success rates he saw in the 7 different hospital ORs he implemented this in. "We found that after they adopted it the complication rates fell 35 percent. It fell in every hospital it went into. The death rates fell 47 percent. This was bigger than a drug." When relating back to what chapter 4 said in management we see how tracking scorecards or checklists continues to be historically one of the best ways to improve efficiency and be consistence in all parts of the hospital.
Sorry that this is a but of lengthy post but I found the overlap between the classes important and sort of exciting to see the management work in other cases too!
Check out Atul Gawande's ted talk here: https://www.ted.com/talks/atul_gawande_how_do_we_heal_medicine/transcript
Thanks for reading!
Grace
Our hospital implemented "High Reliability Training", which is an institution-wide effort that ZERO preventable harm will occur to any patient, family member or staff member. No matter your role - the hospital is mandating that everyone take this training. I certainly see the benefit of this and upper management and the "C"-suite are doing their part to ensure that there are no exceptions to avoid this training.
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