Patient Safety & Clinical Quality

Making Sure the C-Suite Sees the Value in the Facility Department

Here’s the latest hospital health and safety news to know.


MAKING SURE THE C-SUITE SEES THE VALUE IN THE FACILITY DEPARTMENT blog header

Making Sure the C-Suite Sees the Value in the Facility Department

The reputation of the facility department is that of a more behind-the-scenes support role. But, do we really know how valuable their expertise is and how essential their work is to the rest of the hospital?

The facility department ensures standard and code compliance, as well as working to produce a healthy environment, thereby reducing HAIs. These are only two examples of the hard work and dedication the facility department offers the hospital. 

Unfortunately, sometimes the value of the facility department goes unseen or taken for granted. Not for lack of gratitude, but for a lack of internal promotion, according to the article noted below. 

So how can we help the facility department to promote their value to the C-Suite? 

The American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) offers up these tips:

  • Report Metrics – facility managers should report basic metrics, showing cost saving metrics per occupied bed or number of meals served. Not only does this show credibility, but also the cost effectiveness of average hours worked.
  • C-Suite Rounding on the Department – just like any executive leadership rounding process, it provides valuable first-hand insight into the workings of the department and how much value it provides.
  • Build Relationships – it is suggested that by ‘speaking the language’ of executives by reporting on metrics such as Triple Aim, the department can further demonstrate their value to the organization.

Source: Health Facilities Management 

Read more about Executive Leadership Rounding here.


Poor Hospital Supply Chain Management Can Harm Patients

In the fall of 2016, Cardinal Health conducted a survey to find out the perception surrounding hospital supply chains. There seems to be a direct link between poor supply chain management and patient harm and lack of quality of care. 

A few of the disturbing numbers from the survey:

  • 24% of survey respondents have seen or heard of expired or recalled products being used for a patient
  • 18% have seen or heard of patient harm due to the lack of a supply
  • 57% have seen or heard of a doctor not having the necessary products for a procedure
  • 78% of the respondents report that they still have a manual inventory management system

Awareness is the first step to change, so now we must ask, how do we improve our outdated supply chain management systems?

Source: Becker’s Hospital Review


Department of Veteran Affairs is Finally Upgrading to a Commercial IT System

The VA has traditionally built and operated their IT systems in-house, until now. The VA has publicly announced that since past IT systems have not been up to par, they have decided to upgrade their systems, externally, with a third-party provider. 

Not only do outdated systems create inefficiencies, but they can even create risks. For example, the inability for the VA systems to work with the Department of Defense’s systems creates holes, rendering this lack of interoperability a “high risk” area.

In financial terms, an upgrade will save the VA “hundreds of millions of dollars” by decreasing data silos, said David Powner, director of IT management issues at the Government Accountability Office (GAO). 

This IT upgrade has been added to the VA’s 2017 agenda, although no deadline has been set. The CIO for the Office of IT at the VA, Rob Thomas, acknowledges the less than stellar past attempts at updating various IT systems, and has dedicated himself to successfully implementing this commercial IT system upgrade. 

Source: Fierce Healthcare

 

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Last week's blog post: Digitization & Consolidation of Quality Observation Data

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