The Hospital Of Tomorrow
Redefining Hospitals under the Affordable Care
Hospitals have to think strategically and innovatively of how to make the experience better. It’s no longer just about the treatment. It’s about the healthcare experience.
Dr. Sharmila Anand is MD (Pharmacology), M. Phil (HHSM), MBA (HA) USA | Managing Director, SEHPL Dr Sharmila Anand, a social entrepreneur with rich experience in medical education. She leads SEHPL focused on developing next generation of healthcare professionals / leaders who can transform the way healthcare is delivered in India. She is passionate about Affordable education and Healthcare. She left India to pursue her dream of education and returned to help others pursue theirs.
The WHO quotes hospitals as “health care institutions that have an organized medical and other professional staff, and inpatient facilities, and deliver medical, nursing and related services 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.”
In the present day scenario hospitals extend beyond just inpatient facility. They extend into the community and offer accessible care. Hospitals are focusing on health promotion and protection.
Hospitals are changing every day. The management of hospitals is also changing.
Need for change:
• Changes in healthcare
• Specialization on the rise
• Changed expectation of healthcare professionals
• Effectiveness of healthcare delivery
• More awareness toward quality of healthcare
• Increases awareness of safe practices in healthcare
• Influence of IT and other new regulation including Medical Tourism.
• More options to choose with freely available knowledge.
Patients are becoming more demanding than ever before and it will continue to increase. Hence hospitals have to think strategically and innovatively of how to make the experience better. It’s no longer just about the treatment. It’s about the healthcare experience. In order for hospitals to succeed it’s important to meet the needs of the customer and their families. Invariably it’s important the family is satisfied and more likely they are the word of mouth ambassadors keeping in mind they have a lot of time to be spent in the hospital when their loved ones are getting treated. Hence hospitals need to focus on both the experience of the patient as well as their families.
Patients have different needs and in all likelihood they have done a lot of window shopping before they reach a particular hospital. Also word of mouth still is the single largest way patients come to hospitals. The expectations seem to be growing and hence the hospitals have to take a holistic view of providing the healthcare experience to the patients and their families.
While infrastructure is important in hospitals, soft skills are equally important. At every step patients require hospitality in the hospital. Hence staff training and protocols are important. Staff needs to be better prepared to handle crisis situations, that too with a smile.
Boutique hospitals have recently become a trend and surely would become a common concept tomorrow that would grow rapidly.
Effective Leadership: Lean Management
Michael Porter, “Father of Modern Strategy Field” a Harvard Business School Professor said “We must make progress in dramatically improving the value that we deliver,”
The key to an effective hospital is effective focused leadership making execution the key to success.
Lean management was started by Toyota in 1950 and has found its way into making hospitals more effective. Lean management would increasingly be adopted by the hospitals of tomorrow to create the healthcare experience that the patient is looking to have. Lean hospitals focus on three areas: Firstly on the patients, secondly on the healthcare providers and finally on the hospital management.
Patient experience becomes the core of every activity in the hospital. Patient waiting time is greatly reduced that there is a seamless transition from appointment to treatment to billing and follow-up. The healthcare provider are the key in making this experience count hence keeping in mind their comfort also becomes vital to the success of the process. Hence usually hospitals conduct these workshops with the concerned staff to make them the process owners.
Technology for effective hospitals-mcloud
Technology has redefined the way healthcare is being delivered today. It has greatly enhanced access to knowledge and reduced the waiting time.
It’s been predicted by 2025 with introduction of technology there would be marked improvement in operational efficiency, reduction in medical errors, paper less hospitals and personalized care.
Aruba Network believes that technology in healthcare would create a radical shift. The hospitals of tomorrow using technology would have 50% better Operational efficiency, 75% reduced patients misdiagnosis, 80% paperless and wireless & 100% personalized care.
Operational efficiency:
Hospitals of tomorrow would be 50 percent more efficient as per the Aruba prediction through the birth of the ‘mCloud’ and Smart Waiting Rooms. This would give patients the ability to have healthcare across the globe. These online data would be protected and hospitals could reduce the unwanted storage space by using the cloud computing. The doctor would have access to patient details more quickly and ensure lesser waiting time. Operation efficiency using technology.
Reduced Misdiagnosis:
Reduce misdiagnosis by 75 percent through the partnership of real-time data and mobile technology use of real-time data through the use of mobile software and devices, all allowing for more accurate diagnosis giving consultants greater visibility into a patients ailments and reducing misdiagnosis. (See Fig:3)
Wireless and Paperless:
While an entirely paperless hospital would not be the ideal situation an 80% paperless hospital is a sure possibility in the hospitals of tomorrow with the wireless technology aiding it. Deliver a truly paperless and wireless world driving better confidentiality and collaboration using Telemedicine / electronic record (See Fig 4).
Personalized Experience:
The patients of tomorrow would expect personlized care like they currently do in a hotel. Hospital industry would become more an hospital cum hospitality industry. Through the use of mobile apps and techonolically connected rooms a completely customized and personalized experience would be provided to the patients. Bring a customized and smart patient experience through remote consulting, hospital app, smart rooms, consult doc and nurses through customized hospital app (See Fig 5).
Benchside to Bedside to Population
• The hospital of tomorrow needs to be a large, integrated system providing extensive outpatient care beyond its primary facility, dedicated to keeping community members healthy
• The hospital of tomorrow should proactive, devoted to disease prevention
• It has a large network of medical professionals reaching into the community, working in outpatient clinics as well as urgent care centers
• This approach will result in a significant reduction in emergency room visits, an important step to lowering the cost of medical care
• Instead of measuring hospitals by the number of beds filled with patients being treated for illnesses, the hospital of tomorrow will be judged more by its ability to maintain a community’s health
Hospital without walls: Community care
Health care is delivered both at hospitals and at home ( Fig 6). Hospitals of tomorrow would essentially spread beyond the borders of the four walls and extend into the community to provide home care. Using technology a perfect interphase can occur between the hospitals and the community care thereby ensuring continuity of care. Reduction of interphase is possible but interpersonal relationship is a must in healthcare.
Key objective of the hospital of the future will be to keep more patients out of the hospital, an optimal outcome for improved communal medical and fiscal health.
Collaboration for sustainability:
Healthcare concept has shifted over the years from being hospital centric to patient centric. With the patients’ wellbeing in mind and with the concept of doing more from less we at Santosh believe that Collaboration would be the best way forward for sustainability. With so much need for healthcare and at the same time limited resource it becomes imperative that the resources are used effectively to ensure sustainability. To share our personal experience we took up a mission of providing healthcare to the people of Ghaziabad’s urban slum area in Uttar Pradesh.
At first seemed like a huge task. We had access to a healthcare team, but that wasn’t sufficient we had to get to the interiors of Ghaziabad and spread the awareness that healthcare was available at an affordable cost. Hence we collaborated with the District administration, which in turn collaborated with the WHO, who wanted to provide immunization to the people but did not have access to the healthcare team.
Thus the collaboration was a win-win and we succeeded in providing immunization and healthcare to 3 lakh people. The hospitals of tomorrow would also collaborate expand the pie and bring in synergies to provide better healthcare at a cost that would be affordable to the patients.
The hospital of tomorrow is surely some years from becoming a reality. The good news is we are on the right path and with the use of technology, lean management principles, collaboration, preventive aspects of medicine and extending the hospital beyond boarders healthcare of tomorrow would be much better than what it is today.
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