Hospital Information
A 500-plus bed hospital in Kansas
TeamHealth Services: Hospital Medicine
Challenge
When a system scorecard highlighted weaknesses within a 500-plus bed Kansas medical center’s hospitalist division and the facility’s other vital specialty departments, it signaled a need for culture change, better communication and more streamlined collaboration.
Solution
The hospital looked to TeamHealth to stabilize the performance metrics associated with quality inpatient care. In response, TeamHealth’s clinical and operational leaders reviewed best practices from its network of national partners, then customized an approach to meet the hospital’s unique situation. Together, teams began implementing a strategy based upon TeamHealth’s HM Pillars:
- Identifying strong clinical leaders and engaged clinicians who can align with partner hospitals
- Collaboration within the team in ways that overlap into the facility, developing relationships with key facility stakeholders and learning where to turn for best in-house solutions
- Adjusting expectations to be more open to change, since goals may shift, and being open to conform within new or evolving initiatives, (while always keeping clinical quality and patient-centric care the central focus)
Their first important step involved building stronger relationships within the hospital itself, with an emphasis on its vital specialty groups. TeamHealth clinicians also focused on the critical nature of patient handoffs between the ED and the hospital medicine floors, then worked to nurture trust and improve processes associated with those vital transfers from the ED.
Regular process improvement meetings, held twice monthly, kept everyone informed of important scorecard metrics. Visual displays of individual clinician rankings led to an internal competition to see who could keep their numbers highest. The entire group began to hold each other accountable, and when significant milestones were achieved, they celebrated the wins as a team.
As the successes mounted, additional hospital clinicians became champions for Team Health’s efforts, prompting a ripple effect across the hospital.
Results
Performance metrics reflected solid improvement:
- Geometric Mean Length of Stay (GMLOS) decreased to 10% under goal
- Follow-up appointments scheduled prior to discharge increased from 25% to 72.8%
- Compliance with the 3-hour sepsis bundle increased to an average of 79% for 2021, (34% above goal)
For more information, contact us here or email us at business_development@teamhealth.com.
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