by Network performance in healthcare is critical to ensuring optimal patient care. A well-performing network is always available with minimal downtime, allowing staff members to work efficiently and communicate effectively.
High-performance networks in healthcare optimize network performance through various methods, incorporating incentives, alternative reimbursement arrangements, and innovative program designs
Patient Safety
Patient safety measures safeguard against mistakes that can lead to medical errors and infections and help ensure a healthcare organization’s privacy protocols are followed. These efforts can also reduce unnecessary expenses and minimize legal risk.
In this qualitative study, managers from three teaching hospitals affiliated with public medical universities in Tehran, Iran, participated in semi-structured interviews. Participants were selected using a purposive sampling strategy to represent various disciplines, experience levels, and positions/roles in the health system.
One important way to protect patients is to prevent venous thromboembolism (VTE), which often occurs in hospitalized patients and may cause death. This free guide provides a detailed overview of VTE prevention, including evidence-based practices and strategies that have been shown to improve hospital networks performance. It also includes standard order sets and a toolkit for measuring and monitoring VTE prevention in the hospital. Another way to increase patient safety is by implementing an efficient IT network for streamlined operations and a better healthcare experience.
Efficient Communication
All healthcare centers need to share information between multiple teams, departments and facilities, as well as with patients. Good communication is essential, whether handing off medical records or discussing patient care protocols.
Unfortunately, many of the current communication methods are inefficient or unreliable. For instance, staff often document communications in patient charts or files, which creates duplication and may need to be noticed. Additionally, teams constantly work with tight schedules and high workloads, which can hamper efficiency.
To improve communication, healthcare leaders should look for digital solutions that leverage existing devices like pager and smartphones and integrate with record systems to eliminate redundancies. By automating notifications, administrators can quickly send messages to the entire team or individual caregivers with a few keystrokes and track acknowledgments. This way, the best practices are followed, and patient safety is maintained. Also, a clear communication system can help reduce operational costs by increasing day-to-day operating efficiency and reducing the need for duplicate tests.
Reduced Downtime
Downtime in healthcare is expensive, leading to reduced productivity, higher labor costs, and lost revenue from canceled appointments. This can also lead to a backlog of work, resulting in patients waiting longer for care or procedures. Healthcare organizations should implement preventative maintenance strategies and contingency plans for equipment failures to reduce downtime.
The combined performance and healthcare data analysis revealed that downtime significantly affects workflow. Among the most concerning issues were interruptions to patient reporting and delays in laboratory result reporting.
To reduce downtime, it’s important to understand what causes each event. You can identify patterns by recording the cause of a downtime event alongside its duration. For example, a specific hardware problem may be responsible for many downtime events, so addressing this issue could help to cut downtime considerably. Similarly, if rest is caused by scheduling issues, implementing new schedules and ensuring staff follows them could help.
Increased Profits
In a healthcare landscape where patients depend on digital tools, communication errors can cause delays and misinterpretations. Ensuring all network elements operate correctly and at peak performance is critical.
Amid margin pressure, achieving sustainable profitability in the healthcare industry requires new business models that align incentives with value-based payments. These new models involve greater alignment of incentives (typically involving risk bearing), more integrated care, and data and advanced analytics.
Hospitals need to pursue and expand revenue sources to support these new models. This may include pursuing physician networks, expanding service areas, and diversifying through outpatient services and step-down care. Many offer actionable market intelligence to help health systems make these decisions. Their comprehensive Market Overview dashboard allows you to drill down into a CBSA and assess the relative market share of practice groups and facilities. It also allows you to simulate the impact of various combinations of prospective providers on overall network performance.
