EON Blog

Imagine trying to do a critical, life-in-the-balance job under extreme time pressure while hundreds of random strangers wander around your workplace asking too many questions and getting underfoot. It would be disconcerting to say the least. That is a worst-case perspective of having visitors in a healthcare facility.

Doctor and patient communication has been ubiquitous in the American zeitgeist over many decades in the form of the empathetic bedside manner of television doctors. The likes of Marcus Welby (Marcus Welby, M.D.), J.D. Dorian (Scrubs) and Meredith Grey (Grey’s Anatomy) have modeled our ideal in their demonstration of care and communication with patients.

But what happens in the real world? A portion of doctor/patient communication comes from the personality of the physician or other healthcare provider. The larger part comes from the content of material that must be communicated and the trained skills of the communicator.

“All we want to do is help our patients, but what they don’t teach us in medical school is that there are so many ways to do harm.” I picked up that bit of wisdom on The Resident, a new medical show on Fox. In fact, a 2012 study from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (a much more official source than any TV medical drama) reported: “More than one in four Medicare beneficiaries experience some degree of harm while hospitalized.” That’s a staggeringly large number.

The opioid crisis in America has heightened public awareness of the grave potential for health problems related to improper medication management. While the headlines speak of egregious over-prescription and gross negligence, any day-to-day process involving medications can be problematic if not managed well. 

If you want your hospital to operate effectively, standardization is one of the most important tools at your disposal. In fact, over 10 years ago, Dr. Peter Pronovost conducted a test across the state of Michigan of a revolutionary change in hospital I.C.U.s that dramatically reduced line infections. The high frequency and potential severity of line infections—possibly leading to fatality—gives them major importance. 

Inventory management seems like a simple concept. Any organization wants to have “what you want where you want it when you need it.” If it’s there, everything goes smoothly. If it’s not, things start to fall apart.

 “For want of a nail…a kingdom was lost.” That proverb could certainly apply in the healthcare field: “For want of a working piece of equipment, a patient was lost.” Evidence-based studies indicate that in the United States, premature death related to preventable harm to patients may be as high as 400,000 per year. Tens of thousands of these deaths may result from equipment-related issues.

Imagine a defibrillator that doesn’t power up, an operating room laser that fails, a patient monitor that doesn’t alarm, a radiation device that shifts out of calibration, or a digital control system that just shuts down. When any of these situations occurs, it can lead to a bad outcome for a patient, even death. Hospital professionals rely on having working equipment to do their jobs well. Equipment maintenance is critical to make sure this happens.

While managing inventory of patients is a key requirement of healthcare facilities, managing distributed equipment inventory doesn’t fall far behind. Having the wrong equipment, too little equipment, contaminated equipment, or equipment in the wrong spot can mean problems for patients. On the other hand, holding more equipment than you actually need is very costly.

Fortunately, managing equipment inventory and distribution is not a new problem. Many industries have addressed and optimized inventory systems and developed methods to pursue continuous improvements. Let’s consider some of the distributed equipment needs in medical facilities and discuss best practices that might apply.

Patient safety and quality are the most critically important elements of patient care. Safety and quality cannot just be given lip service, but must be measured and monitored to ensure that they improving or at least not declining. Many health institutions have regular monitoring of KPIs (key performance indicators) for patient safety and performance quality.

In fact, Medicare and Medicaid require that certain measures, such as specific mortality and readmission rates, are reported regularly and often made public. This is a bit like restaurant public health inspection ratings that can draw people in if they’re high or make them shy away—as from the plague—if they’re low.