The New England Journal of Medicine recently published an article regarding four habits of effective hospitals. Although the article is geared towards, hospitals, the principles below are applicable to any health care organization.
- Specification and planning – Base choices, transitions, subgroups, and patient pathway on specific, meaningful criteria.
- Infrastructure design – Create microsystems to meet the needs of patient sub-populations. The author stresses that microsystems create “an important shift away from general-services-organization designs that use a single platform to meet the needs of many different patient groups.”
- Measurement and oversight – Collect more data than required by payers, regulators, and ratings agencies. Develop organizational priorities and integrate quality measures with those priorities.
- Self-study – Ensure that the processes in place are achieving the desired goals by examining positive and negative outcomes. Then use that information to create tools that improve outcomes.
Information gathering as suggested in the NEJM article could lead to development of compliance plans. As compliance is a hot topic this year (and will continue to be in the years to come under the PPACA), implementing these four habits will be useful for providers of all types and sizes.
