Google the words "best practices, " and you will find about 75 million internet pages addressing the topic. Google "hospital best practices" and the list shrinks to only 9 million web webpages. That this two-word phrase instantly became a universally-recognized part of the management vocabulary is incriminating evidence that consultants have been function.
It's all about timing (and a few other things)... Add the buzz word-like admiration for "best practices" to the staying power of a much abused saying "There's silly in re-inventing the wheel", stir equipped culture's insatiable hunger for instant results, and shake nicely. You now have the makings of real impact.
"Best practices" have been known as "documented strategies, activities and approaches shown through research and evaluation to be effective in achieving the highest degree of excellence in productivity, profitability and competitiveness. " Part of the concept's appeal is can be elegant simplicity. Find the best way to do something and render it. Problem solved. Ah, if only it was that simple.
Famed management guru Peter Drucker described the modern hospital as "the virtually all of these complex social organization ever created by man. " That complexity is a fact. For that part, so is the dept head's frequent claim of a lot of "uniqueness. " Every hospital is different than all others in literally thousands of ways. These differences exist regardless of whether among peers that share the same basic mission and challenges. Here is a narrow your search of hospital-to-hospital differences available on the market in countless combinations and so permutations of combinations, each with tremendous implications for productivity, profitability and competitiveness:
- Systems and Work Procedure Factors
- Patient access.
- Nursing care delivery.
- Medication administration.
- Order entry.
- Results reporting.
- Care documentation.
- Patient discharge.
- Supply inventory and find out control.
- Organizational Factors
- Organizational structure.
- Planning.
- Information dissemination.
- Employee schedules.
- Patient appointment diaries.
- Resource Factors
- Clinical equipment.
- Information systems.
- Supplies.
- Human resource numbers, skills and instruction.
- Physical space adjacencies, size, and layout.
- Business Assumption Factors
- Mission and dream.
- Strategic goals.
- By-law requirements.
- Resource commitments and find out constraints.
- Organization Cultural Causes of
- Management focus.
- Work ethic.
- Employee commitment and find out buy-in.
- Medical staff expectations.
The greatest shortcoming from the "best practices" concept in the long term is that it concentrated stifle management creativity. Imitation by definition cannot give off progress. It would be more accurate (and instructive) to re-label just about anything "best practices" concept to such as "best practices that we know about--so far! " Larger practically, the sheer quantity of performance-defining variables makes it impossible to diagnose with certainty those "strategies, activities and approaches" that can or should be in many instances emulated. The likelihood that is still to "best practices" doctor's offices will identify an exportable "cause" of high performance that should work in your hospital is consistently vanishingly small.
Is it not interesting that the same managers who are quick to the "uniqueness argument" to produce defense against adverse quest comparisons are usually among the first to insist that the best way to resolve the variance is import a solution from "high performers" for his or her peer group? Aren't these the very departments that were previously claimed to be so dissimilar as for manufacturing performance comparisons invalid? (Note: These differences do not negate the importance of benchmarking so long and surprisingly , instead peer groups are established correctly. )
Although imitation has been described as the most sincere sorts of flattery, as a technique to change position performance improvement in the current hospital it may not produce best results. After all, it does not matter in the least that Mercedes Benz grow a best transmission ever previously if that transmission cannot be employed in your Buick.
We suggest the following approach to applying the actual precise "best practices" concept in a very hospital:
- Look inside a person first! Identify performance restricting factors. Consider both the cost of "fixing" those factors as well as the cost of not paying off them. These may immerse:
- Systems and crafts process factors.
- Resource factors.
- Organizing factors.
- Business assumption factors.
- Hospital culture factors.
- Specify target outcomes. In other heroines, describe the conditions medical center wants to exist as a result of resolving performance-limiting factors. Quantify them if at all possible.
- Select, develop, and implement the solution that should work best in your hospital. Consider the institution-wide effect on virtually any departments, the medical a workforce, and other stake containers. In some cases, the solution can be internally formulated or purchased "off the actual precise shelf. " In completely different cases, a customized solution could possibly be necessary.
It is during this last step that you might consider emulating "best practices" off their hospitals or industries but only once the potential solution has always been thoroughly evaluated to insure which fits the unique starting up and cultural characteristics period hospital.
Hospitals have dead much treasure, time, and energy attempting facilitate import "best practice" solutions that had great initial surface appeal but ultimately proved to be unworkable because of internal factors. The solutions that should work best in your hospital will necessarily be the ones that most closely match your place organization's unique characteristics.
1990-2011 Frank J. Brady & Associates, Inc.
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