For many hospitals and healthcare organizations, sourcing and finding the appropriate Healthcare Policy Management Administrator to oversee their policy and procedure management system is a daunting challenge. One of the most common questions we hear from hospital (healthcare) administrators is: Does a policy manager role have to be full-time or can it be effectively handled as a part-time position? The answer to this question as you might imagine is different for every hospital. That being said, in this article we will discuss the things you need to think about when hiring a person to manage your policy management system. And then at the end, you should be able to make the best decision for your organization.

1. THE BEST WAY TO HIRE
A HEALTHCARE POLICY
MANAGEMENT
ADMINISTRATOR

2.  For many hospitals and healthcare organizations, sourcing
and finding the appropriate Healthcare Policy Management
Administrator to oversee their policy and procedure
management system is a daunting challenge.
 One of the most common questions we hear from hospital
(healthcare) administrators is: Does a policy manager role
have to be full-time or can it be effectively handled as a part-
time position?
 The answer to this question as you might imagine is different
for every hospital. That being said, in this Slideshare, we will
discuss the things you need to think about when hiring a
person to manage your policy management system. And then
at the end, you should be able to make the best decision for
your organization.
HIRING A HEALTHCARE POLICY
MANAGEMENT ADMINISTRATOR

3.  If your policy management system is largely manual – by that we
mean it’s contained in a variety of spreadsheets, manuals and
binders distributed across multiple departments and locations –
the time requirement to manage that manual system may justify
a full-time hire.
 If you’re using a good policy management software system and
it’s properly deployed – it might take your policy management
administrator between 15 and 30 minutes per month to
maintain.
 This should be your healthcare policy committee/team’s ideal goal and
sweet spot to strive for.
 At many organizations this person may be sourced internally.
 They can be sourced externally as well, but this is typically done in larger
Integrated Delivery Networks/Health System settings where the overall
scope of work for the policy organization project is much larger.
NEEDS OF SMALL VS. LARGE
HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS

4.  In these larger settings, a temporary full-time employee may
be needed for an interim period to help with tasks outside of
the policy system itself. These are mainly tasks associated
with the initial set-up and implementation of a new policy
management system.
TASKS ASSOCIATED WITH POLICY
MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

5.  Good examples of these tasks would be:
 Completing a comprehensive inventory of policies.
 Cataloging the location of all policies.
 Documenting who is responsible for each policy.
 Determining if all policies have an electronic (MS Word)
version.
 Cleansing the policy library of duplicate and obsolete policies.
 Drafting an updated policy on policies.
 Locating where all archive versions of policies are.
 Determining if there may be any critical gaps in policies.
TASKS ASSOCIATED WITH POLICY
MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

6.  For knowledge transfer and risk mitigation reasons, it is
important to have one to two additional people shadow the
training sessions of this policy administrator.
 One of these additional people would serve the purpose of
filling the Policy Administrator’s role (either permanently or
temporarily) should the original policy administrator not be
available anymore.
 There is more turnover than ever within the healthcare sector
due to legislative changes and intense merger and acquisition
activity.
 The reality of all of this is there will be turnover and you want
to be prepared to have your policy and procedure project
smoothly transition onto the replacement(s) without too many
setbacks.
TASKS ASSOCIATED WITH POLICY
MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

7.  Great candidates for the policy administrator role
usually come from an administrative support role
within the following departments (these are in the
order of the most likely places to find a successful
candidate):
 Quality (usually reporting to the Vice President of Quality).
 Compliance (usually reporting to the Corporate Compliance
Officer).
 Administration (usually reporting to the CEO, COO, CFO, CMO).
 Nursing (usually reporting to the Chief Nursing Officer).
WHERE TO FIND GOOD POLICY ADMINISTRATOR
CANDIDATES IN YOUR ORGANIZATION

8.  There is no real dispute that the best way to manage your
policies is via an electronic policy management system.
 Whether it’s developed in house (which is rare) or an out of
the box policy management solution like PolicyManager, the
policy administrator must be incredibly comfortable with web
based technology, content management systems and word
processing.
 The proficiency in these skills should be critically assessed
when hiring your policy administrator.
 When hiring internally, organizations usually find a good
candidate from the administrative and support staff within
departments such as administration, quality or compliance.
POLICY MANAGEMENT – MANUALLY
MAINTAINED OR SYSTEM-DRIVEN?

9.  Many organizations will feel perfectly comfortable
interviewing and hiring a policy administrator. However, if you
are unsure about the process, Policy Medical would be happy
to help in the following two ways:
 If you would like to have a free copy of a healthcare policy
administrator job description to use for your own recruiting
purposes please go to http://bit.ly/1LAhdsW to download a
free copy (available in the description of this Slideshare).
 If you would like me to do a 20-minute interview with your
final candidate for the role to see if they will be the ideal
policy administrator for your healthcare organization please
go to http://bit.ly/1LAhkEP, also available in the description
of this Slideshare presentation.
JOB DESCRIPTION AND HIRING PROCESS

10. THANK YOU
If you would like to find out more about policy management solution,
PolicyManager, please do not hesitate to contact us by going to
http://policymedical.com/contact

11. Policymedical.com