Becoming A Change Agent in Healthcare: The Key to Meaningful Improvement

U.S. healthcare leaders increasingly prioritize managing budgets and cutting costs. This financially-focused approach isn’t surprising, considering that many countries struggle with rising healthcare costs—a major part of national budgets for most industrialized nations—and lack the know-how to effectively contain these expenses. However, in some cases, a fiscal-first mindset can deprioritize the most important part of healthcare: the patient.

As healthcare organizations face unprecedented financial demands, they also face equally important quality and safety issues that can lead to devastating outcomes (e.g., mortality) and steep financial penalties. Therefore, when considering strategies to reduce costs and eliminate waste, leaders should not underestimate the power of a clinical change agent in healthcare to improve and create more cost-effective care.

Without a Change Agent in Healthcare and Access to Data, Clinical Improvement Is Hard to Achieve

Clinicians care deeply about the quality of care they deliver to the patients they serve. They generally aim to exceed the standards for performance because they are committed to continuously improving care delivery.

Yet, while clinicians want to meet and even surpass the rigorous criteria for quality care, most do not really know how their individual performance compares to their peers; they lack an effective way to measure the quality of the care they deliver. Without quality and outcomes insights, clinicians can’t usedata了解什么对病人是最好的，或者确定最佳做法。

Additionally, the reward in fee-for-service models is focused on volume, instead of value, further incentivizing clinicians to focus on quantity of care over quality of care.

A Change Agent in Healthcare Can Transform and Redefine Value

Innovative clinicians are already working as change agents by collaborating with each other, identifying evidence-based care practices,measuring outcomes, and continuously improving care for the patients they serve. Disease by disease, they are attacking the medical conditions that afflict humanity, and in the process, improving the quality of care they deliver to patients.

As change agents, clinicians cans ask several key questions to guide the innovation andquality improvementprocess:

• What is quality?
• 我们应该衡量什么?
• How can we achieve the best outcomes?
• How can we continuously improve?

对这些问题的回答可以激发新的想法或当前想法的不同变化，从而导致更有效的改进方法。临床好奇心和持续质疑目前的做法是实现临床护理的新高度的关键。

Empowering Clinicians with Data Leads to Clinical Improvement and Lower Costs

A growing number of clinical change agents in healthcare are discovering that questioning common practices and using data to choose the most successful practices is enhancing professional experience and patient outcomes. This continuous improvement can be rewarding and aligns with professional commitment to deliver excellent care. However, constant development also requires access to relevant data and a willingness to explore which practices work best.

For example, health systems can use analytic insight to tweak existing practices and perfect their processes to meet theirpopulations’specific needs. In one case, these small changesreduced heart failureand thousands in cost savings.

Clinicians can work together to agree on a definition of quality, then start measuring their performance against that definition with data. They can share and debate what the data reveals and identify what works best based on analytic insight. In this collaborative process, clinicians, team members, and operational leaders can learn from their experience.

Using data and analysis to drive continuous improvement is critical because organizations who focus on quality frequently havelower costs. Most clinicians would agree that the potential for savings in the care delivery process is exciting, but many doubt the feasibility of the required changes in a real-world clinical setting. To achieve these savings, clinicians—the team members who can change the front lines of care—must shift their mindset to measuring care by quality instead of quantity.

A Change Agent in Healthcare: The Answer to Low Quality, Rising Costs

随着临床医生努力优化护理提供和结果，他们将重点转移到医疗保健中最重要的事情:为患者提供护理的质量。在改善医疗服务的过程中，医疗机构将管理并削减成本。通过衡量医疗保健的价值，行业将了解到，临床医生在医疗保健中发挥着核心作用，通过改善护理和弯曲不断上升的成本曲线。

Additional Reading

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