5 Steps To Changing The Healthcare Perspective
While the idea of healthcare reform is commendable
, it isn't actionable in its recently approved, government-backed incarnation. Why? Because it attempts to achieve reform in what is fundamentally the same business and cultural environment in which healthcare existed prior to March 22, 2010.
Granted, our new legislation commits to extending insurance coverage and improving access to care to a wide, under-served population, and, in theory, improving overall health and wellbeing. Whether you love or hate the bill that passed, this type of reform only addresses healthcare at the moment of need - essentially "sick" care. This reform does not engage consumers further upstream, where education, and coordinated care can affect outcome. It does not redefine the business model of a broken industry. And it does not address the behavior change that is needed - taking personal responsibility for your state of health - to affect positive, healthy outcomes longitudinally.
An opportunity exists to reset thinking, redefine the environment and realize innovations in healthcare that have hope of making a difference in our citizenry's health over the long term. You can grab that opportunity in 5 steps.
1.Suspend your SOP.
It sounds painful and next-to-impossible, but it's necessary. Fundamentally, you cannot pursue something innovative and game-changing if you're still following the same old processes and procedures. Further, don't event attempt suspending your SOP in a corporate culture that cannot tolerate ambiguity, complexity, the unknown and failure. For a truly innovative idea to have a modicum of a chance, it needs to be unfettered enough to evolve and the corporate support to let it happen organically.
2.Put the individual consumer in the center of healthcare.
Like it or not, healthcare is evolving into a consumer-driving industry. But is the consumer in the center of our current healthcare system? Only in theory. Look at your innovation from the consumer's perspective. Does it create a better experience? Will it meet the latent and/or emerging needs of the consumer? Will it result in better outcomes and improved health? The old adage, "The customer is always right" now applies.
3.Expect change to change expectations.
To innovate in healthcare, change is inevitable. Consider this your modified version of the Seinfeld episode in which the character "George" decides to do the opposite of what his instincts are, because his instincts are always wrong. So if he does the opposite, he'll be right. If your office has always required patients to complete forms upon arrival, change the process to allow those forms to be completed and submitted online in advance of the appointment... or better yet, electronically pull the needed information from your patient's online personal health record via the access your patient has allowed you, making it hassle-free for the patient and convenient for your staff. The result? Both you and your patient expect quick and easy transfer of information, and can spend more of your appointment delivering care, rather than paperwork.
4.Build a "straw man" and take calculated risks.
Few innovations ever turn out exactly as they were envisioned. Testing the premise, process and expected outcomes is critical. But how do you test something that doesn't really exist yet? You build a "straw man", a purposefully temporary functioning example of the innovation that's substantial enough to effectively test, but without so much invested in it that you can't tear it apart and start over. Quite plainly, create a rough prototype of your innovation, allocate appropriate resources to sustain the test, determine a reasonable timeframe for the test, and try it out.
5.Review, refine, repeat.
Data is gold, and testing that is conducted and recorded effectively yields tons of it. Identify only a small universe in which to test your innovation so the environment is flexible and the data set is manageable. Set benchmarks for reviewing the data and scrutinize it closely and critically. Analyze the data from all possible angles. Then use the learnings to refine the innovation. Are the processes creating barriers and slowing progress? Change the workflow, modify the procedures and try again. It's a circular process of reviewing data, refining the innovation, and repeating the testing with the intent of ultimately arriving at a refined innovation in which you feel confident and are ready to scale.
Though the title of this article references 5 steps, we all know how complicated healthcare can be, and how intricate it can be to affect real change. So where do you start? Identify a single issue that you and your institution would like to tackle. Then, implement the 5 steps above.
Remember: it's often a little switch that has a big effect. Focusing on small changes one at a time is how innovators like the Cleveland Clinic and M.D. Anderson have done it. And it's not just the big players who can innovate; even little guys have the power to improve patient care.
by: beverly ingle
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