What wouldn’t we gain in health care if we did the obvious but unusual? For example, collaborating with medical equipment manufacturers in addition to better teamwork?
Imagine the tangible and less tangible profits if a patient spent 15 seconds less in an MRI scanner or radiation treatment device?
Wouldn’t health care personnel want to waste less time before actually working with clients (= patients)?
What would health care organisations say if they were able to help more clients per day?
And what about the health care insurers, who’s only marketing interest seems to be the ‘p’ in Price, wouldn’t they welcome an efficiency boost?
I surely think so. Hospitals would gain almost one hour per day, as I found out during my at the presentationVerbeeten Institute earlier this year. This “one hour” is the sum of sharing, collaborating and thinking “out of the box”.
It sounds too simple to be true, but I belief it can be done, especially when I look at the possible gains or, to put it the ‘Dutch way’, when I look at how much money we could save.
I’ll gladly explain how I reached this conclusion, thanks to the everyday experiences of health care personnel in the audience:
- every day around 220 patients receive radiation treatment
- it takes about 15 seconds for patients to position themselves in a scanner
- very often patients need health care personnel to help them get into the right position.
In other words, if you no longer need those 15 seconds because the equipment is designed in such a way that it facilitates correct patient positioning, you’ll save a lot of time.
For example, in the case of the Verbeeten Institute it would save 220 times 15 seconds = 3300 seconds = 55 minutes, besides of course all other gains I already mentioned in my introduction.
Reasons why and why not
When I learned about this and asked health care personnel whether it had ever crossed their minds to at least report, or even better, to discuss this with manufacturers of radiation treatment devices, they shook their heads. It had never occurred to them, although they realized things could be so much better and so much more convenient for all parties involved. They just never followed up that thought.
I fully understand why they never got that far. Still, I want to promote “thinking out of the box” and collaborating outside your own organisation. It‘s worth the effort, in this case and all other cases, whether you like to save money, to make a profit, or to create value.
Care-if-you-dare
It’s worth it, because all involved will benefit, even the manufacturers, not to mention patients, health care organisations and medical insurers worldwide. That would really sum up a nicely, by the way. However, I prefer to think big and start out small.
So look around you to see where, how and with whom you yourself can collaborate.
For a moment try to forget about borders that seem to be there, but, too often, are your own creation.
Let me know what you gained with respect to happy clients, time, efficiency, satisfied managers or maybe even everlasting fame. I would be more than happy to write a new blogpost on that topic.
This blogpost has previously been published in Dutch.
About ‘creating value instead of cutting budgets in health care’ Jacqueline wrote the following blogpost:
‘Less is more: The benefits of a digital patient file‘ (Dutch).
Jacqueline Fackeldey, fackeldeyfinds, 30 September 2009
Jacqueline is klantropoloog (human to human marketer), business inspirator & innovator at www.fackeldeyfinds.com and firestarter and connector at www.nexthealth.nl / www.health20.nl.
