Balancing between personalized medicine and standardization
We delineate the way to peak performance by transferring process improvement principles from industry to healthcare. In a safety-oriented environment, the finetuning of key performance indicators and operating criteria needs to give careful consideration to the balancing between individualized patient care, personalized medicine, and standard operating procedures.
Interprofessional collaboration is key to long-term peak performance
Since successful change and consequently high performance in hospitals significantly relies on a clockwork-like intertwining of different professions, this chapter lays a special focus on measures to improve interprofessional cooperation between physicians and nurses, e.g..
Corporate culture
How do successful organizations reach and sustain excellent performance? We showcase examples from industry firms and hospitals worldwide that display some of the most relevant techniques needed for effective performance improvement in hospitals. A transparent process organization has a high impact on the hospital`s culture in this regard.
Patient engagement
An often neglected factor in performance improvement campaigns is the patient as an active contributor to better outcomes. Albeit, creative patient engagement initiatives have shown to be very supportive of achieving better medical and economic outcomes. Examples and impulses for patient engagement measures will inspire you to involve your patients into the clinical pathway.
Real-life case studies illustrate a step by step technique of creating change in performance and output. One example is the reduction of the postoperative length of stay in the ICU after a CABG procedure integrating physicians, nurses, and patients.
Personnel development
Performance improvement often goes hand in hand with improving the employees’ skills and knowledge.
Thus, we advocate a seamless integration of performance improvement measures with a systematic personnel development programme and give examples for a successful marriage of those two management areas.
Topics of this section
The topics of this section span the following areas:
- Hospital safety
- Routines and process organization
- Balancing between individualized patient care, personalized medicine, and standard operating procedures
- Infrastructure and information technology
- Interprofessional collaboration: How to create a clockwork-like intertwining of different professions in a hospital
- Customer relationship management in hospitals
- Personnel development
- Entrepreneurial culture
- Continuous improvement systems
- Creative patient engagement