Healthcare and Hospitals

There’s no single method for handling healthcare scheduling. Over the past 50 years, we’ve worked alongside thousands of healthcare facilities that are looking to provide employees and patients with timely access to a scheduling process that works. So rather than explain the intricacies involved in the scheduling process of each healthcare clinic we’ve worked with, we’ve collected some of the most common misconceptions that prevent facilities from offering timely and convenient access to health services and listed some of the best strategies to help improve your appointment scheduling workflow.

Scheduling Preferences Vary Based Upon Setting. Adjust Appointment Scheduling Accordingly.
The challenge is that many healthcare directors are quick to group healthcare environments into one giant bucket and approach appointment scheduling from a company-wide angle. It’s a blanket approach that’s far too common in larger healthcare facilities. Imagine that you’re in charge of a multi-million dollar healthcare facility and you're expected to improve quality scores and expand the bottom-line: it’s easy to understand how quickly the lines between efficiency and quality can be blurred.

Yesterday marked the end of day two of the Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit. In case you missed what went down during day one of the conference, we posted an entire recap featuring the biggest takeaways from the addresses and breakout sessions (which you can read right here ). We’ve been following along with the conference’s second day of sessions and breakouts to create yet another recap of the day’s biggest talking points.

Yesterday marked the start of the 8th annual Lean Healthcare Transformation Summit. The conference, which is being held in Palm Springs, California, offers healthcare leaders an opportunity to learn about how to create and stabilize organizational change with the help of Lean practices. Many attendees have been using the hashtag, #hcsummit17, to share their takeaways from the big event, providing their followers with some informative case studies and tips to improve standards in healthcare. We were following along all afternoon and compiled a list of five big takeaways from the conferences first session.

We’re celebrating National Nurses Week by dedicating our blog to those of us that have dedicated their lives to the sake and safety of their patients. As a bit of a thank-you for the countless nights lost to overnight shifts and 18-hour days, we’ve opened our blog to fellow RN’s looking to share their stories. Here’s what they had to say.

This week we’re celebrating National Nurses week here at Magnatag, and we would like to thank every nurse that has dedicated his or her time and energy into saving lives. We’re dedicating the entirety of our blog posts this week to topics generated by a handful of interactions we’ve had with members of the nursing community. We recently got the opportunity to speak to a handful of Nurse Practitioners that were willing to share their story about how they believe nurses can offer their patients the best care in the future, and one topic of conversation continuously came up on conversation: Teamwork—or more specifically, communication within a collaborative environment.

About a month ago, I found myself alone in the ER on a Saturday night after an unfortunate encounter between my middle finger and a potato peeler. In reality, my injury was minor in comparison to what you would expect from a typical Saturday in the ER—or so every major medical drama on TV would lead you to believe. I expected some form of orderly chaos, an environment that seemed controlled yet ready to burst with commotion any second. Much to my surprise, the unit felt nothing like that. The emergency room was quite, both the nurses and doctors that attended to my injuries were prepared, etc. Outsiders to the healthcare industry (like myself) are under the impression that there’s supposed to be gunshot wounds and burn victims, turmoil at every corner as nurses and doctors sprint down the hallways—it’s not supposed to be just some 24-year-old guy who doesn’t know how to properly peel a potato! There seemed to be an order to everything, nearly the exact opposite of what you’d see on Greys Anatomy, Scrubs or E.R. Curious to see if this amount of traffic was normal for a Saturday night, I asked my nurse if the ER was usually this quiet. She informed me that they were actually quite busy, with the night’s census being at an all-time high for the week. It wasn’t that this unit was completely devoid of chaos or trauma, but it was clear that staff members knew how to manage their workload properly.

Here at Magnatag, we frequently receive hundreds of emails looking for a better way to optimize scheduling systems.

The healthcare industry is currently in the midst of a massive growth spurt, experiencing a period of extreme change. Part of that change involves a reform of industry-wide culture, placing more importance on standardization and communication. We recently spoke with Linda, the manager of our sales team and loyal Magnatag employee of 31 years, to get insight into the efforts that some healthcare facilities are taking as they progress further into this new shift in healthcare reform.

This week we’re celebrating National Nurses Week by taking time to thank nurses for their commitment and dedication to the healthcare industry. In a time where nursing salaries are fractions of what professional athletes make, it is important we acknowledge their countless hours of grinding around the clock for the sake and safety of others.

The following is a guest post by Lindsay Wilcox of RNNetwork.

You have one in each patient’s room and probably use at least one at the nurse station or in the break room. That’s right; it’s a nursing whiteboard, and it can help you greatly improve your communication with your patients and the nurses and physicians you work with. Here are five reasons to start using them more.

The following is a guest post by Lindsay Wilcox of RNNetwork.
Lack of communication between hospital physicians and primary care providers leads to a higher risk of readmissions and poor care coordination once patients are discharged, according to a recent Fierce Healthcare article — and effective communication between physicians and nurses is just as important.

Patient bedside boards are the latest trend when it comes to transforming care at the bedside. Magnatag has spent time researching the many benefits that bedside boards offer to patients and their caregivers across the globe. Check out the infographic below to see just how integral patient bedside boards are to the healthcare industry today!

This morning, I stumbled across this great study by nurses from the Lehigh Valley Health Network, who implemented communication whiteboards to see if the tools would improve patient communication.

The Journal of Hospital Medicine’s, “Patient Whiteboards as a Communication Tool in the Hospital Setting: A Survey of Practices and Recommendations” is a very interesting study for anyone working or interested in the medical field. Communication is important in every field, but especially crucial in the medical field and that’s why I thought it was a significant study to share.

The patient experience is an area of healthcare that can no longer be overlooked. Patients are routinely questioned about the care they receive through HCHAPS surveys. The results of these surveys can have an impact of the level of Medicare reimbursement a hospital receives. According HCAHPS to December 2014 summaries, 21% of patients did not feel like nurses always communicated well, 36% did not feel they were always provided information about their medications, and 32% did not feel the hospital staff were always responsive.

Dry-erase whiteboards have a number of uses in hospitals, medical centers, and clinics. When used consistently and efficiently, a whiteboard can help communicate to both patients and staff key details that include but are not limited to diet, schedules, allergies, and special considerations. Individual whiteboards in a hospital room serve as a central location for both the family and the professional staff to stay informed of patient goals and timelines. Whiteboards are also becoming a popular choice for tracking patient schedules in clinics, emergency rooms, and operating rooms. Dry-Erase whiteboards have several advantages to consider. A dry-erase whiteboard in a patient's room is easy for both staff and family to access, improves communication between staff and patients and have been proven to raise Press Ganey scores.

Written by Laura Baker, Nurse Practitioner.

See this post and more at her blog: http://askthenp.blogspot.com/

Benefits of Hospital Whiteboards - The Specifics
According to one survey, 80% of nurses, house staff and attending's agree that whiteboards play an important role in improving patient care, team work and communication.  In fact, communication errors contribute to 65% of all reported sentinel events within medical facilities.  Effective use of a whiteboard can result in an 80% increase in a patient or staff members willingness to read, a 73% increase in comprehension and a 35-50% decrease in interpretative errors.

Improving Patient-Staff Communication
A key benefit of the use of whiteboards within medical facilities is improving communication between the medical care team, the patient, and concerned family members.  In fact, communication errors contribute to 65% of all reported sentinel events within medical facilities. Dry-erase whiteboards in patients' rooms serve as a field-proven mean of communication easily accessed by both staff and family members. Important information concerning treatment schedules, daily goals, allergies, contact information, medication times, discharge information and care team members can be easily recorded and changed on a whiteboard.  When the patient or family members have access to a whiteboard, communication is improved because a question is less likely to be overlooked or forgotten if a staff member is not immediately available to provide an answer.  The infographic and links provided below show the important role whiteboards have on not only improving communication but overall patient/staff satisfaction and Press Ganey scores.

We have taken a look at various organizational charts that every business should have, and it's understandable that whiteboards are an essential part of keeping your business more organized and running as efficiently as possible. However, it's not only an office building that can benefit from having whiteboards: Schools use them as well to enhance the learning process, and hospitals are finding great uses for them, too.

Hospitals can benefit from using various types of whiteboards. Whether it's to keep a schedule, track a patient's progress, or keep a watch on the staff, whiteboards in hospitals are important for efficiency. Here are some ways that hospitals are using whiteboards to their advantage.