ViewPoints Blog

When Paul O'Neill took over Alcoa in 1987, market share had been slipping, profits were down, and the stock price was falling. When he was introduced to the investment community, he was expected to deliver the typical new CEO speech about how he would turn the company around with a focus on increasing profits and reducing costs. Instead, Paul O'Neill announced that his goal was to make Alcoa the safest company in America.

Did you know that by reducing the anxiety your patients feel when they enter your facility helps in their perception of their visit? Reducing anxiety makes patients feel like they are being treated by people who truly care about them.

Community Hospitals "independent hospitals of ~300 beds and less have to tackle the same issues as their big-bed brothers or health system sisters. They must lower costs while improving quality, do more with fewer resources, and affiliate effectively with other providers. But they don't have the scale or corporate structure to help with research, data mining, standardization, group purchasing and the like to drive efficiencies.

We have all seen the carefully constructed mission statements, whether emblazoned on a lobby plaque or posted on the website of our local hospital. The intent is usually stated clearly improving the health and wellness of the communities we serve. But are we truly meeting our mission?

The adage, "you can't manage what you can't measure," has never been more relevant in today's healthcare. With the rapid movement toward shared risk and shared savings arrangements, any successful provider must have the ability to continuously measure and monitor performance against targets and goals, turning available data into actionable information and insights.

Misconceptions - if voiced long and loudly enough - will over time be interpreted as fact. And facts are what drive decisions, whether in the boardroom or on Capitol Hill. For some time now, rural and Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) have been saddled with the notion that they are less efficient and adhere to lower standards of quality and patient satisfaction than their urban counterparts. But based on the results of our 2014 Rural Relevance Under Healthcare Reform Study released today, this notion can be challenged with empirical data.

Big data is the current buzz word in healthcare, and with good reason. Today, analytics platforms and ratings systems offer valuable insights into how healthcare providers manage patient care, cost and outcomes. There is no shortage of big data available across the healthcare landscape today; the challenge lies in effectively analyzing the data to better understand the cycle of care, implement the necessary improvements and ultimately, improve patient outcomes and keep cost low.

More than 100 nurses told us in a recent survey on nursing obstacles and inefficiencies. A ViewPoints post from iVantage's Michelle Gray Bernhardt.