The Top Five Insights into Healthcare Operational Outcomes Improvement

The Top Five Insights into Healthcare
Operational Outcomes Improvement
HEALTH CATALYST EDITORS

© 2020 Health Catalyst
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Healthcare Operational Outcomes Improvement
The complexity of healthcare delivery, from
varying levels of care, multiple processes
and departments, different teams and team
members, and more, to its state of flux
under constant reform, demands effective
organizational operations.

Operational effectiveness ensures
health systems run efficiently while
delivering high-quality, appropriate care.
Healthcare operations cover the
administrative, financial, legal, and
clinical activities that keep health
systems caring for patients.
With operations so critical to care
delivery, forward-thinking organizations
continuously strive to improve their
operational outcomes.

Prominent thought leadership on
healthcare operational improvement has
addressed common industry challenges,
including waste reduction, obstacles in
process change, limited hospital capacity,
and complex project management.

Solutions and lessons learned from these
insights center on holistic approaches that
address improvement on an organizationwide
level, strategies that align improved patient
care and experience with cost savings, and
the importance of analytics-driven and
measured changes.

Five Top Operational Improvement Insights from
Health Catalyst
These five articles (links) describe the dominant challenges, opportunities,
solutions, and lessons learned in operational outcomes improvement for
healthcare organizations.
Healthcare Quality Improvement: Foundational Business Strategy1
Using Improvement Science in Healthcare to Create True
Change2
The Four Keys to Increasing Hospital Capacity Without Construction3
Healthcare Project Management Techniques:
A Pragmatic Approach to Outcomes Improvement4
Seven Features of Highly Effective Outcomes Improvement Projects5

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#1: Healthcare Quality Improvement: A Foundational Business Strategy
Recoverable healthcare waste costs the
U.S. over $1 trillion annually.
Fortunately, quality improvement theory
(per W. Edwards Deming) intrinsically
links high-quality care with financial
performance and waste reduction.
According to Deming, better outcomes
eliminate waste (i.e., any consumption of
resources that doesn’t optimally benefit
the patient), thereby reducing costs.

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To improve quality and process, and ultimately financial performance, an
industry must first determine where it falls short of its speculative potential.
Healthcare fails in five critical areas:
Unacceptable rates of
preventable care-
associated patient
injury and death.
Vast amounts of waste.Massive variation in
clinical practices.
High rates of
inappropriate care.
A striking inability to “do
what we know works.”
1 2 3 4 5

Health Catalyst
The key to Deming’s strategy is to
practice continual improvement and
think of the manufacturing or business
process as a holistic system, not as
separate departments.
In healthcare, this comprehensive
system is known as team-based care,
a collaborative, goal-oriented approach
to patient-centered care with a direct
impact on a health system’s bottom line.

Health Catalyst
#2: Using Improvement Science in Healthcare to Create True Change
As healthcare witnesses exponential growth in
data, health systems must navigate using that
data to drive improvement.
Healthcare has historically been slow to adopt
new technologies for reasons including budget
constraints and regulatory burdens, as well as
an inability, or a lack of experience, to
effectively implement changes.

4: Design
interventions
and plan initial
implementation.
3: Explore root
causes behind
opportunities and
set process aims.
2: Scope the
opportunity and
set goals.
Health Catalyst
#2: Using Improvement Science in Healthcare to Create True Change
An eight-step improvement model gives health systems a framework for
effectively applying improvement science, measuring results, and
understanding how likely their changes will lead to the desired impacts:
1: Analyze the
opportunity for
improvement and
define the problem.
5: Implement
interventions and
measure results.
6: Monitor, adjust,
and continually
learn.
7: Diffuse and
sustain.
8: Communicate
quantitative and
qualitative results.

Health Catalyst
#3: The Four Keys to Increasing Hospital Capacity Without Construction
With the demand for patient beds often
exceeding the number of beds available,
many health systems face a hospital
capacity problem. The negative impacts
of insufficient bed capacity include:
Surgery cancellations
Increased length of stay
Declining patient and staff satisfaction
Increased emergency department
length of stay
Turning away transfer patients.
>
>
>
>
>

Health Catalyst
Costly and time-consuming construction isn’t
always an option, leading organizations to look
to healthcare analytics to get ahead of demand
while maintaining or improving patient outcomes
and satisfaction.

Health Catalyst
Organizations can use four key concepts to improve capacity management:
Use data to understand
the problem and the
target solution.
UNDERSTAND YOUR DATA
Have analytics teams work with
units throughout the organization,
including leadership.
DRIVE ANALYTIC SOLUTIONS
Recognizing that data analytics
tools are only as good as their
impact, focus on the ability to
leverage data effectively to
assess interventions.
APPLYANALYTIC TOOLS
Have leaders spend time
with the operations team to
understand the workflow.
INTEGRATE LEADERSHIP
01 02
0304
RESULTS

Health Catalyst
#4: Healthcare Project Management Techniques: A Pragmatic Approach to
Outcomes Improvement
In response to the Triple Aim, healthcare
leaders commit to advancing processes to
improve patient care, reduce costs, and
improve the patient’s overall experience and
satisfaction.
This focus has made healthcare project
management skills increasingly integral to
health system operations as a means of
controlling costs, managing risk, and
improving project outcomes.

Health Catalyst
#4: Healthcare Project Management Techniques: A Pragmatic Approach to
Outcomes Improvement
By applying project management techniques,
including waterfall and agile methodologies,
organizations can plan, organize, and execute
a set of tasks efficiently to maximize
resources and achieve specific goals.
Adding industry-specific guidelines,
healthcare leaders can adapt proven
project management techniques for
clinical, financial, and operational
process improvement.

Health Catalyst
#5: Seven Features of Highly Effective Outcomes Improvement Projects
There’s a formula for success when putting
together outcomes improvement projects and
organizing the teams that make them prosper.
Too often, critically strategic projects launch
without the proper planning, structure, or
people in place to ensure viability and long-
term sustainability.
Such projects never achieve the critical mass
required to realize substantial improvements,
or they fail to achieve sustainable outcomes.

Health Catalyst
#5: Seven Features of Highly Effective Outcomes Improvement Projects
A formula for enduring success follows seven simple steps:
1. Focus on outcomes (versus accountability).
2. Define goals and aim statements early and stick to them.
3. Assign an owner of the analytics (report or application) upfront.
4. Involve end users in the planning process.
5. Design the process to make doing the right thing easy.
6. Don’t underestimate the power of one-on-one training.
7. Engage a project champion.

The Importance of Pragmatic, Proven
Healthcare Operations Insight
Healthcare operational improvement projects
are typically additional responsibilities for
team members who help advance their
organizations’ strategic goals.
From frontline clinicians to administrative
and IT departments, these roles and
skillsets are critical to improving
healthcare outcomes.

The Importance of Pragmatic, Proven
Healthcare Operations Insight
These individuals already have full responsibilities
in addition to the improvement initiative.
Healthcare leaders can look to proven,
data-driven strategies and experiences
within the industry to ensure the best
guidance for supplemental yet
critical improvement work.

For more information:
“This book is a fantastic piece of work”
– Robert Lindeman MD, FAAP, Chief Physician Quality Officer

More about this topic
Link to original article for a more in-depth discussion.
The Top Five Insights into Healthcare Operational Outcomes Improvement
Removing Barriers to Clinician Engagement: Partnerships in Improvement Work
Health Catalyst Editors
How Healthcare Cost-Per-Case Improvements Deliver Big Bottom-Line Savings
Steve Vance, MBA, FHFMA, MBA, FHFMA, Senior VP, Professional Services
Is a Medical Writer the Missing Accelerant to Your Outcome Improvement Efforts?
Kirstin Scott; Tracy Vayor
Four Essential Ways Control Charts Guide Healthcare Improvement
Lloyd Provost
Outcomes Improvement Governance: A Handbook for Success and Achieving More with Less
Health Catalyst Executive Report - David Grauer, MBA, MHSA, Senior VP, Professional Services
Tom Burton, President of Professional Services

Other Clinical Quality Improvement Resources
Click to read additional information at www.healthcatalyst.com
Health Catalyst is a mission-driven data warehousing, analytics and outcomes-improvement
company that helps healthcare organizations of all sizes improve clinical, financial, and operational
outcomes needed to improve population health and accountable care. Our proven enterprise data
warehouse (EDW) and analytics platform helps improve quality, add efficiency and lower costs in
support of more than 65 million patients for organizations ranging from the largest US health system
to forward-thinking physician practices.
Health Catalyst was recently named as the leader in the enterprise healthcare BI market in
improvement by KLAS, and has received numerous best-place-to work awards including Modern
Healthcare in 2013, 2014, and 2015, as well as other recognitions such as “Best Place to work for
Millenials, and a “Best Perks for Women.”

The Top Five Insights into Healthcare Operational Outcomes Improvement

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