| | MAY - 20238UTLOOKHealthcare Tech IN MY OPINIONBy Ana Maria Y. Jimenez, PhD, RN, CPHQ, CLSSBB, Director of Quality, Asian Hospital and Medical Center, PhilippinesThroughout my career, I've had the chance to observe multiple healthcare organizations. In that time, I've compiled working knowledge on when a Hospital is not functioning as efficiently as possible, usually as a result of mismanagement. The following are symptoms of this situation:1.) Excessive wait times2.) Lack of coordination among different departments/groups3.) Wasteful and inefficient processes4.) Unfriendly facilities5) General lack of care for patient service6.) Chronic Supply Chain Challenges7.) Delays in service delivery8.) Unprofitable operations9.) Delayed, and over-budget projects10.) Wrong people are given wrong roles11.) High attrition rate12.) A lack or total absence documentation of processesFOUR (4) KEY CONSIDERATIONS to overcome this challenge:1. Operational Excellence is a powerful competitive advantage for any industry, including healthcare. This is because it focuses on improving systems and processes. Operational Excellence is the execution of a business strategy that is more consistent and reliable than the competition resulting lower operational risk, lower operating costs, and increased market share, subsequently widening an organization's economic moat. Operational excellence in healthcare is focused on empowering staff to deliver safe and reliable care, improving processes, using resources more efficiently, eliminating mistakes and unnecessary procedures, and improving health outcomes.To achieve operational excellence, I directed my Quality Management team to empower my organization to:· Identify improvement opportunities· Design efficient processes· Implement viable solutionsAll of the above is then augmented with training in process improvement at Lean Six Sigma, green belt level.2. The objective must be to build around what the customer and other stakeholders want and then to deliver Journey of Operational Excellence
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