As we head into the second half of 2020, many of the temporary flexibilities for telehealth allowed during the COVID-19 pandemic have been made permanent. Since its arrival in
Read more »Taking on the Hospital C-Suite’s Biggest Woes
The recent HIMSS discussions about improving health outcomes through innovative platforms and tech-enabled workflows—and ACHE’s annual health executive survey detailing the top concerns of the hospital C-Suite—always provide a peek into the mindset of our clients and their peers. So it is no surprise to hear what’s keeping these leaders up at night—specifically financial challenges; patient safety, quality, and satisfaction; and technology. We’ve seen firsthand the very real toll these concerns have on hospital senior management.
Yet, while we weren’t surprised, we were not discouraged. We see the thread that binds these issues together—namely the industry’s history of siloed efforts. Compliance, safety, patient experience, and clinical excellence are driven by separate initiatives and solutions each with their own data.
When it comes to compliance, all too often hospitals (and the technologies they employ) focus on acing regulatory agency audits, yet fail to implement enterprise-wide high reliability strategies to ensure that the issues are addressed and remain addressed. At best, this results in inconsistent compliance and inefficient processes. At worst, it divides the responsibility for patient safety between finance, operations, and various clinical departments, leaving each with limited visibility into how their actions impact patients and the organization as a whole.
At a time when patients, acting more and more like consumers, are demanding transparency and hospital margins have little wiggle room to handle unplanned liabilities and hits to their reputation, organizations must find the right tack to address their fragmentation.
Verge recommends a cohesive strategy to get to high reliability based on principles that benefit other high risk industries—where:
- High-risk, high-liability data is shared between all stakeholders
- A safety culture mindset is pervasive
- A mature Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) program provides enterprise-wide visibility
Organizations that embody these mature GRC practices are proven to outperform peers by making better decisions, more efficiently deploying scarce resources, and reducing their exposure to negative events.1 And at Verge, we believe implementing a Governance, Risk and Compliance for Healthcare (GRCH) framework has the power to move organizations forward on the path to high reliability, transform the tone of next year’s ACHE survey, and deliver patients the successful and high-quality experiences they deserve.
