HospitalPortal.net Blog

What a pleasure it was to have spent a good part of my week last week being indoctrinated into why Service Excellence is an important, practically imperative goal for healthcare organizations today.  The theme of Custom Learning Systems’ 2012 conference was “Thriving on Healthcare Reform” and it was an appropriate title.

The conference showcased in cold, hard numbers how the organizations that have undertaken the initiative have excelled, not only with improved HCAHPS, but also with improved employee retention and satisfaction.  Of course, these measures are not unrelated—staff that feels empowered and appreciated will naturally “pay it forward” and make patients and their families “feel the love” and know they are in a different kind of hospital.   

It was so refreshing to watch the Video Scrapbooks created by the organizations that attended and to actually be able to feel the excitement in the room.   An recurring, underlying theme throughout the conference was to cut the bureaucratic speak and get back to basics, talk to people like real people, don’t ignore any elephants that may be in the room, look them in the eye and just be real.  More importantly, CLS’  bottom-up approach seems to be a critical part of the success of their program.  As founder, Brian Lee asserted in a conversation the week prior to the conference, “authorship=ownership.”  When frontline staff has the opportunity to have a say in the direction of the organization, they often say profound things, but they also exhibit commitment, quite unlike what would take place if a Service Excellence initiative were be forced on them by leadership.

The conference was about nurturing people—staff, ourselves, and patients.   Session topics focused on quality for staff as well as for patients.  I was surprised but delighted to participate in sessions on topics like Workplace Bullying and how to deal with it and how to take care of yourself with balance so you can be your best at everything you do—work, spouse, parent, or whatever other role you fill in your non-work life.  This qualitative philosophy resulted in a great vibe—a group of people who really care about healthcare working together and exchanging ideas on how to keep the positive momentum going in an environment ripe with challenges.

As I headed to airport, I realized I was sad to leave despite my adoring daughters, husband, and golden retriever anxiously awaiting my return.  Thank you and mission accomplished, Custom Learning Systems.  If healthcare organizations can accomplish that same sort of sentiment in their staff, they will be successful in so many ways.   

I am so excited that Brian Lee has agreed to share his vision during a joint webinar session on February 7, The Magic of Frontline Engagement.  The webinar is free, so be sure to register—you be glad that you did! 

http://hospitalportal.net/HospitalPortal/Main.aspx?tid=260

Like most if not all of our readers, I have been hearing and reading A LOT about ICD-10 over the last year or so.  What is surprising to me is how few organizations seem to have a comprehensive game plan in place for how they will prepare for the many functional shifts that will have to take place to successfully navigate the landmines around ICD-10.  Aside from training and education for coding and revenue cycle staff, there are other major considerations including IT and analytics implications which span multiple hospital systems, documentation improvement required by clinicians, and much more. 

Companies across the globe had veritable armies working on the Y2K non-event, yet experts describe the ICD-10 as bigger than the Y2K transition.  So my question is am I the only one who is concerned that the sky is falling?

Thanks to our strategic partners leading science and health eduction provider Elsevier, HospitalPortal has a great upcoming free webinar highlighting the Roadmap to Success in ICD-10 Readiness.

This session will be January 19 at 2:30pm EST/1:30pm CST/12:30pm MST/11:30am PST.  Register using the hyperlink below.

http://hospitalportal.net/hospitalportal/Main.aspx?tid=261

Learn how the right e-learning tools maximize efficiency by utilizing focused, prescriptive training, and monitoring of staff progress. The take-aways from this informative session will include how and when to start the preparation of your staff and how to do so with the least possible disruption of operations.

In this upcoming webinar you will learn:

• ICD-10-CM/PCS and its impact on healthcare organizations.
• The challenges and benefits of ICD-10 implementation.
• Timing and implementation schedules for ICD-10 planning.
• Educational planning and strategies related to ICD-10.

What a year!  At HospitalPortal we have been fortunate to participate in some amazing conferences—National Coorperative of Health Networks, Ragan Communications Healthcare Social Media Summit at Mayo Clinic, Greystone’s Healthcare Internet Conference, and Ragan Communications Intranet Summit to name a few.  In doing so, we have been thrilled to learn from and collaborate with other thought leaders who are shaping the technology and trends that create a cutting-edge healthcare intranet.   We have been inspired by some amazing stories of trailblazing organizations that take their queue not from what the world around them is doing but from what should be done and how they can most touch the lives of patients and staff.   Each of these amazing conferences inspired me in different ways.

At NCHN, I was touched by the passion and selflessness of network administrators who are fighting every day to ensure network endurance in uncertain times.  I also had the pleasure of meeting Brian Lee and being taken in by his quest to help healthcare organizations attain Service Excellence, become hospitals of choice, and enhance the lives of their employees (really their teams) in the meantime.  Brian will be our featured speaker for our February webinar on the topic of “The Magic of Engagement.”  We will also be joining Brian, his team, and his clients at their Healthcare Service Excellence Conference in Dallas mid-January.

I must admit, the Healthcare Social Media Summit at Mayo Clinic was a whirlwind of emotions—I laughed, I cried, I was in awe of the things I learned.  ePatient Dave shared an amazing story of how Social Media can connect and support patients and their families that struggle with incredibly trying illnesses.  A brave group of ladies shared their story of how they found one another online after being served up a very scary prognosis on SCAD and how they convinced the right renegade at Mayo Clinic to put her heart and soul into researching a condition that no one else wanted to bother with.  Shel Holtz mesmerized the audience with his vision of what we can expect in Social Media in Healthcare in the coming years, as well as what technologies are quickly going the way of dinosaurs.  Last, but certainly not least, I don’t think I’m overstating it when I say that Lee Aase and his “Dream Team” touched everyone in attendance with  their  ability to take their ideas and patiently but persistently turn them into something that can only be described as visionary and personifying the mission of Mayo Clinic.  On  top of it all, I had the pleasure of really getting to know a few of our favorite clients…and discover what it’s like to live in Serbia and what is so appealing about Angry Birds in the process. 

At Greystone, I was humbled by how a little company that could like HospitalPortal could wow big name healthcare organizations yet collaborate and form partnerships with other healthcare IT vendors who quite literally “wrote the book.”   I was moved and amazed by Chris Catallo’s energy as well as his commitment to making sure everyone felt like they were an important part of what was going on. 

Again, Ragan Communications outdid themselves for the Intranet Summit.  Andy Jankowski seemed to channel Steve Jobs in sharing his dream of what companies can and do accomplish with their intranets, how what seems almost like Science Fiction is the wave of the future.  There was a lot of talk of social intranets and employee engagement.  Leaders from LLBean were kind enough to share not only their successes, but also the trials and errors that got them there.  Hoyt Finnamore once again solidified that Mayo Clinic has an astute knack for attracting multi-disciplinary talent that is more prophetic than we mere mortals.  Hoyt’s Roving Reporter video blogs and interviews remarkably not only connect a staff of over 50,000 that spans the globe, but also do it with is unique brand of hysterics that is reminiscent of late-night talk shows, leaving the audience anxiously anticipating his next release.

So what are the take-aways from a year like this?

- Video is where it’s at.  Not only can you use humor to engage staff, but cleverly produced videos can cement an idea in staff’s mind that they will likely recall for many years.  A great example of this is the video that American Heart Association produced to promote awareness of Hands-only CPR.   Ken Jeong and Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader look-alikes doing Hands-only CPR to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive” is about is good as it gets. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5hP4DIBCEE  Another is Mayo Clinic’s video to promote the “Know Your Numbers” Heart Health campaign.  This video ingeniously rewords the ‘80’s song “867-5309” to “Blood Pressure, Lipids, and BMI,” making the otherwise very forgettable measures quite memorable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSnRKvU5fVM&noredirect=1

-Social Intranets are not in the future, they’re here.  The question is when and how will your organization adopt this new world order.

-This first step to selling the patient community on your organization’s value and mission is engaging your staff, including referring physicians and volunteers.

-Usability is king.  Make sure the information employees need is easy to find and to get to or they will reject the intranet, which would be a huge waste of an amazing solution.

This leaves the obvious question—what is to come for HospitalPortal in 2012?

In my crystal ball I see things like chat functionality; more sophisticated calendars, including Outlook integration; whiteboard functionality; additional flexibility in the approval workflow process to allow for sequential approval; enhanced reporting capabilities; personal news feeds; and maybe if the stars align, a mobile app. 

We also realize that nothing we do in healthcare exists in a vacuum.  We hope to continue to work more with complementary healthcare IT vendors that would be of benefit to our clients.  We are already partnering with Health Data Solutions to integrate their QDC Incident Reporting system with the portal.  Having this tool available on the portal adds the benefit of allowing staff to report incidents and near-misses anonymously, without fear of punitive action.  The obvious benefit is that more incidents and near-misses are actually reported, allowing Risk Management to better understand what is going on under the surface and creating dangerous situations.   Our goal is to continue to seek out and work with other key solution providers that can seamlessly integrate with the portal; provide more and more cross-departmental functionality to make employees lives easier and save more and more critical moments of staff’s time in order to achieve the ultimate goal–improved outcomes and patient satisfaction.  Here’s to making it all happen!

Most healthcare organizations miss the mark in defining investment in their P&P program. Join acclaimed Policies and Procedures authority Raymond Urgo to learn the essential components and reasons for having a balanced investment in Policies and Procedures. Topics covered will include developing and communicating valuable Policies and Procedures with compliance and the many regulations that affect healthcare in mind.

Our presenters will discuss the traditional methods compared to the latest trends in the automation of policy & procedure management through web based applications. We will also review best practices for managing policies and procedures in an electronic or web format. In addition there will be a live demonstration HospitalPortal.net Policy Manager. The Policy Manager is a centralized system for managing policies, procedures, and documents across departments in hospitals and other healthcare organizations.

We came across this article and wanted to share it with our community.  All three strategies can be supported by an employee intranet.  Please take a look!

3 Strategies of Financially Successful CAHs.