Making a case for standardisation and utilisation to clinical teams

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act presents many opportunities to improve patient care quality and outcomes while improving the bottom line. Executive leadership under the direction of their boards have developed short-term and longterms strategies to address how the work will be organised, goals and timelines will be met and who will have management responsibility to execute the initiatives. The key to the effectiveness of far reaching initiatives such as these is an efficient and effective communication plan that serves all business levels of the enterprise. This paper will specifically address the infrastructure and tactics to meet the measures of the value-based purchasing (VBP) program of the Act. Hospital leaders who have engaged their quality, value analysis, supply chain, financial and clinical teams to apply metric-driven process improvement methodologies such as Lean1 to objectively move current practices to best practices are ahead of the pack. The important methodologies to eliminating waste and improving care outcomes are the standardisation of processes, products and services and the appropriate utilisation of human, financial and tangible assets while designing best clinical pathways.