Healthcare leaders spend a lot of time
predicting and planning for the future, but
when it comes to hiring and retaining
employees, I hear a lot more about future
problems than I hear possible solutions

Carrie Vaughan, for HealthLeaders Media

I hear a lot about establishing a "team" atmosphere in hospitals. Whether you're trying to build a better workplace environment, improve your quality, or mend your finances, a key element to just about every hospital improvement effort involves a team approach.

Every so often I run across a book that resonates so true that I feel as though it were written just for me.

Kevin Stranberg, Senior Consultant, Baird Consulting

Later this month, Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHP) begins live reporting...are you prepared to be compared on a national quality report, as perceived by your consumers?

When I was interviewing sources for this month's
quality story for HealthLeaders magazine, I asked a
representative from Press Ganey why a hospital
would
continue administering its own patient satisfaction
survey when the federally-administered HCAHPS
survey provides them with much of the same
information. Her response was, "Why wouldn't you?"

Do you need information about health topics
such as service excellence, leadership,
health care trends, coaching, employee
relations, communication or the patient
experience?

Nothing makes my eyes glaze and my pulse slow like
the ubiquitous "pillars" of healthcare. Usually
comprising some variation of "people, community,
finance, quality, and growth," pillars are the focus of
staff retreats, mission statements, and annual reports.

Kristin Baird's new book, Raising the Bar
on
Service Excellence - The Health Care
Leader's Guide to Putting Passion Into
Practice, is ready for release.

We hear a lot in the national media
about the state of health care in our
nation today. And what we're
hearing about is most likely high
costs, the numbers of uninsured,
lack of access or system
inefficiencies. It's enough to make
the most optimistic person throw up
his hands in despair.

An increasing amount of research on
patient's happiness indicates that there isn't
any correlation between how happy patients
are and a hospital's expenses and
profitability, or mortality and complication
rates.