The Healthcare Efficiency Revolution

In recent years, improving efficiency in healthcare facilities in general, and in hospitals specifically, has become increasingly important. This book provides essential information on the powerful performance results that can be achieved when patient-centered efficiency reforms are implemented within health management systems. Created for departmental and institutional healthcare professionals, this book offers intuitive guidelines, technical tools, and work procedures to comprehensively analyze all aspects of current operations and reconfigure assets in pursuit of serving more patients, reducing costs, and generating revenues. This work is particularly valuable as its focuses on the most basic service unit in any given hospital (department/unit) and on methodologies for enhancing management practice and creating internal cultures of continual change and ongoing development. The book provides effective and lasting solutions that reduce E.R. and physician consultation wait times, complications and hospital readmissions, and laboratory tests performed, as well as increase O.R. productivity, annual numbers of patients served, and overall rates of staff and patient satisfaction. Also addressed are how best to handle moments of crisis (such as COVID-19); ethical and legal concerns; and the hiring, development, promotion, and empowerment of staff. Dedicated sections analyze ways to minimize disruptive behavior among physicians, nurses, and other personnel, and present strategies for improving department meetings, particularly in an era of social distancing. The book also describes how to maximize outcomes through multi-disciplinary approaches, the use of core performance metrics, ongoing data collection and analysis, simple reporting protocols, transparency, and the adoption of technological aids, including dedicated apps. Everything presented in this work has been put into practice. They achieved substantial and sustainable improvements in service delivery all with little or no change in staff, budgets, and other resources already at hand. This book will help specialists and medical managers in the healthcare market to more effectively use their own resources to achieve levels of performance and success objectives they might otherwise have thought were unattainable.