Why this Seminar is Very Important to Health-care Workers

 As health-care workers, we need to start responding to continuous pressure from the public to improve our services. In our attempts to improve the quality of care, we must evaluate all of our processes and fix systemic failures within our systems. This is one of the primary objectives of this seminar.

 The processes of fixing systemic failures and improving care will take well-designed training of staff over many years. If we are not responding to public concerns fast enough outside forces may step into health-care and force us to fix the problems. Most of the time, when an outsider comes to fix problems within health-care we tend to suffer both headaches and heartaches. Take the problems created by DRG and HMO payment to correct abuses in health-care services. Both of them were responding to wasteful spending within the system that we were unable to correct. Unfortunately, a large portion of the money that could have helped to improve the quality of care is being spent to run HMOs. Similarly, if we do not start now to fix the systemic failures endemic in our systems, outsiders may eventually step in and force us to do those things that may be disadvantageous to our profession.

 In her seminar to nurses and other health-care workers, Sharon Cox indicated that health-care is beginning to go through an evolution of change, which other industries have already attained. Health-care professionals are just learning the value of shared accountability to empower frontline workers to fix systemic problems. They are learning to replace the old hierarchy style of management associated with parent-child relationship with a more effective adult-adult relationship of teamwork. Instead of “us versus them” we all take responsibility to work as a team, fix problems, and improve care. However, the process from start to finish takes three to five years with continuous training of both managers and employees.

 Since the process of fixing these problems will take a while, when are we going to start? Instead of treating the reports of medical errors in the media as attacks against our profession, perhaps we should respond to such reports as challenges to improve our processes of delivering care. Erroneously, many in health-care believe that quality improvement always cost money. This seminar is designed to approach quality improvement cost neutral. 

 Moreover, one of the scariest observations is the aggressive movement in some states near both coasts to prosecute and incarcerate health-care workers for medical errors. I can understand a lawsuit for monetary recover for damages. It is unsettling to think of being jailed for mistakes made by human errors. Some physicians are presently serving time in jail for medical errors. I’m hoping this will not be a national trend. This is the more reason why health-care workers need to take the present evolution of shared accountability, continuous quality improvement, and fixing systemic failure in healthcare institution very seriously.

 Sign up for the quality improvement seminar today for yourself and your institution. Let performance improvement coaches teach you and your staff how to improve your system cost neutral.