Career Center

Hospitals have not long been thought of as particularly efficient business operations. After all, their first priority is patient care, not efficiency, right? However, with all the new technology available, it’s certainly possible for hospitals to be efficient and provide exceptional care at the same time.

So what makes a hospital efficient? Are all the goals for efficiency business related, or can some be directly related to medicine too? Here’s a look at 5 things the most efficient hospitals are doing to keep their standard of medicine – and business – high.

1. They look for ways to diagnose more quickly – The most efficient hospitals utilize medical technology to its fullest, so that patients can be diagnosed, and therefore treated, more quickly. This means shorter hospital stays and fewer complications for patients, but it also means lower costs and an ability to serve more patients than ever before.
2. They eliminate paper – Paper is inefficient in many ways. It is costly in itself, of course, but that’s not its only inefficiency.

• • Papers can get lost, which can increase patient treatment errors.
  • Reviewing and updating patient charts in electronic format is much faster than updating paper charts, saving time for doctors and nurses.
  • Paper charts and medical records take up a huge amount of storage space. The elimination of paper medical records means hospital storage space can be allocated to other things, such as larger emergency rooms and more patient beds.
  • Transfer of paper charts and records to other hospitals and doctors is slow and costly. Electronic charts are easily transferable.

1. They train – Highly trained employees become more efficient and make fewer mistakes. While many hospitals cut training in order to save money, research has actually shown that the hospitals that run the most efficiently offer continuous training for their employees.

1. They use Computer Physician Order Entry (CPOE) – This method again eliminates paper – the paper in prescriptions, specifically. When doctors use CPOE to order patient prescriptions, they not only eliminate paper, but they have been shown to reduce prescription errors by as much as 85%. Prescription errors, along with misdiagnoses, are two of the most common reasons patients must be readmitted to the hospital. And, of course, readmission of the same patient twice for the same medical issue decreases efficiency markedly.
2. They put the most resources in the right places – A Leapfrog Group study reported that sufficient staffing in the Intensive Care Unit of a Hospital can reduce the hospital’s mortality rate by as much as 40%. The best hospitals fully staff here and make cuts, when needed in less critical areas of the hospital.

As today’s hospitals look for more and more ways to cut costs in the wake of healthcare reform and poor economic conditions, efficiency standards will become more and more important. There are many new technologies available to help hospitals improve their efficiency today, and there are certain to be many more to come in the near future.

Mary E. Ward writes about how to get an mha online.

Filed under: Uncategorized