Healthcare administrators have an essential responsibility to ensure patients receive high-quality care delivery in clinics/hospitals. While providing foolproof healthcare facilities, hospital managers ensure that an institution operates smoothly even during an ongoing pandemic. The impact of COVID-19 made healthcare organizations more careful about treating patients effectively without threats of infections in the facility. With their knowledge and information, administrators can help hospitals navigate through difficult times and combat different challenges. So, which strategies can these managers utilize to boost patient care? We’ll discuss certain methods several hospital administrators have experimented with!
How Can Hospital Managers Offer Better Care Delivery?
These methods involve both micro and macro-level decisions that can transform healthcare facilities in various ways. Some strategies require administrators to introduce drastic changes into the entire system. In contrast, others only involve individual doctors/nurses adopting certain habits. These methods enable managers to offer high-quality care delivery to patients from electronic health records to implementing telehealth organization-wide. But they can’t achieve this objective without formal education.
Several healthcare practitioners contemplate acquiring the academic credentials needed for leadership responsibilities. So, distance learning allows you to get certified from a research-based institution online. This degree helps you complete your coursework as per your schedule. By earning a master of health administration digitally, you can expand your knowledge and network to land management positions in the healthcare industry. Then you’ll become capable of bringing these changes into your patients’ lives:
- Setting Clear Guidelines
A healthcare administrator’s responsibilities involve setting clear-cut guidelines for acquiring better patient outcomes. So, we recommend establishing easy-to-digest and understandable instructions for your workforce. These guidelines will cover subjects ranging from approaching a patient’s family to reducing hospital-acquired infections (HIAs). Remember to communicate effectively with the staff and allow them to ask questions boldly to clear any misconceptions. These instructions can show everyone how to carry out vital duties involved in patient-centered care, e.g., patient education, advocacy, and comfort. Your staff expects you to keep updating these guidelines as well.
- Achieving Your Goals
Which sort of outcomes do you expect to get from these strategies? It’s essential to set some clear, concrete, and measurable objectives before implementing any changes. You can later track these goals to assess how much you’ve achieved! The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) outlines certain medical objectives hospital managers are supposed to establish. We’ll explain six of these features to help admins realize which objectives they can set in a medical setting:
- Minimize injuries to patients from treatment options.
- Increase your dependence upon care delivery that’s effective.
- Understand that the patient should be the center of care delivery.
- Reduce waiting both for patients and caregivers.
- Reduce as much wastage as you can.
- Keep healthcare equitable.
- Collecting Data Properly
You can’t manage patient outcomes without measuring them by collecting and analyzing data. It’ll help you realize which areas require improvement for better care delivery. The introduction of electronic health records has enabled admins to enable more patient-centered care. While many institutions focus on better billing and revenue generation, you should instead emphasize tracking and monitoring your patients. Use patient satisfaction surveys to boost the quality of your services.
- Reducing Hospital Readmissions
It’s estimated that hospital readmissions cost the healthcare system $26 billion annually. That’s why administrators should attempt to reduce them by establishing protocols to eliminate conditions that may cause re-hospitalization. These readmissions can be prevented by conducting a post-discharge follow-up with residents. Sometimes, patients are readmitted within a month of discharge due to an unrelated condition. So, your staff should learn a patient’s medical history to understand the risk.
- Decreasing the Cost
Patients are seldom immune to the rising costs of healthcare treatments in the United States. These expenditures have restricted many citizens from receiving optimal patient care. Our country spends almost 20% of its GDP on medical facilities so managers can establish payment structures to enable more patients to seek hospital services. Increasing healthcare accessibility will also permit patients lacking insurance to seek medical assistance. And that’s where patient advocacy comes into play.
- Advocating for Patients
Besides doctors and nurses, hospital managers should also advocate for patients – especially with their misunderstandings cause patients to make harmful decisions. Many patients are unable to meet the costs of their treatment because insurers have declined to cover it. So, admins can advocate on the patient’s behalf and negotiate with the insurance provider. It can help prevent a “custodial” stay at the hospital. At the same time, patients receive the treatment they deserve, thereby improving the care quality.
- Enhancing Patient Engagement
It’s difficult to improve outcomes without involving the patient since they can advocate the best for themselves! So, healthcare administrators should search for careful methods to effectively enhance a patient’s engagement. Moreover, you can help patients and their families communicate properly with nurses, physicians, and other primary caregivers. Work on your active listening skills to better understand a patient’s concern. That’s how you can make patients more involved in treatments.
- Collaborate with Organizations
Managers should contact organizations that focus on patient safety by researching online, reading medical journals, and contacting associates in the industry. These organizations can help implement positive changes to improve patient care. Besides routine procedures that you handle in-house, you can suggest that patients utilize additional services to boost their engagement and learning. This collaboration allows you to fill the gaps impossible for your organization alone to fill before.
- Rewarding the Staff
Offering incentives can motivate your workforce to become more cautious about patient outcomes. Since your staff’s performance directly influences care quality, setting a “reward system” can boost their engagement. Boosting people’s morale through these “perks” will help managers achieve their goals effectively, providing patients the necessary attention for quick recovery. When your subordinates receive recognition promptly, they’re encouraged to work harder. Studies show that “employee recognition” serves as the driving force behind boosting an individual’s performance. So, it would help if you didn’t forget admiring RNs actively involved in patient education, advocacy, and comfort.
Conclusion
We’ve established that the decisions made by healthcare administrators directly influence a patient and their treatment. Experts have stated that hospital managers are legally and morally responsible for providing quality care delivery to their clients. It begins with individuals earning an MHA from reputable institutes by using e-learning facilities.
These simple methods include surveying patients and monitoring discharges properly. Ensure that your staff remains well-trained while you avoid overworking them to maintain employees’ productivity. Also, create and publish educational materials explaining complex medical problems in laymen’s terms. Don’t forget to communicate effectively with patients to understand their concerns. Also, making the rounds can help you improve care delivery in the hospital and address a patient’s complaints.