Article

Medical Device Training's Impact on Healthcare Quality Improvements

This blog post excerpts an article by Danielle R. Coleman, Director of Medical Technologies, HealthStream, in the Fall 2014 issue of HealthStream's PX Advisor, our quarterly magazine focused on improving the patient experience.

April 01, 2021

Article

Tie the Standards of Performance to Healthcare Employee Practices

The Standards of Performance can be used in numerous ways to help select applicants who are well suited to the healthcare organization’s culture. For example, some organizations attach a copy of the Standards to employment applications. Then potential employees are asked if they can live by the defined behaviors and if they are willing to sign a statement of agreement.

April 01, 2021

Article

What are Standards of Performance and How Do They Impact Healthcare Culture?

Standards of performance comprise the code of behaviors that clearly communicates the way you want every employee in your organization to act when approaching a customer or providing a service. Another way to think of the standards is a set of expectations used to define the specific ways that staff members are to conduct themselves in the work environment and during the performance of their duties.

April 01, 2021

Article

Use Targeted Pulse Surveys to Achieve Healthcare Workforce Alignment

As an essential part of an organization’s workforce strategy, the annual employee engagement survey provides organization-wide feedback for an overall view of the health of an organization and the factors influencing business outcomes. Employee engagement is the metric that drives everything else, and when scores rise or fall, other metrics, such as financial or operational performance, and patient satisfaction can climb or dip with it.

April 01, 2021

Article

Sustaining The Standards of Performance in Healthcare

In order for Standards of Performance to become ingrained in a healthcare organization's culture, they must be hardwired so that employees live and breathe them daily. Communication is the key to making a permanent connection between the Standards and the behaviors that most exemplify the culture, serving as the backbone of its success.

April 01, 2021

Article

Building a Quality Nursing Workforce with Training, Assessments, and Technology

NurseCompetency is on a mission to create a safer healthcare environment for patients and healthcare workers through the use of current, clinically relevant education, assessments, and technology. Creating a quality workforce improves outcomes and patient experiences.

April 01, 2021

Article

The Leader's Role in Creating and Promoting Standards of Performance for Healthcare

This blog post continues our series of HealthStream Coaching's patient experience best practices. Every week we share information from our coaches that demonstrates their expansive understanding of the challenges faced by healthcare organizations and the solutions they have identified for improving the patient experience and patient and business outcomes. This week we examine Creating Your Own Standards of Performance for Healthcare.

April 01, 2021

Article

One Doctor's Plan to Overhaul Primary Care

Dr. Rushika Fernandopulle, co-founder of Iora Health, says health coaches have the power to heal the delivery system. The health coach model is different than disease management programs in which nurses in a call center monitor patients. Rather, a health coach meets face-to-face with patients to help improve their health and welfare.

April 01, 2021

Article

You’re Already a Healthcare Data Visualization Expert

The term data visualization may already be in your vocabulary or you may have heard it quickly in a discussion about charts or reports. Anyway, don’t worry that it's some new class you have to take or concept that you will be forced to use. Whether you realize it or not you’re already an expert. Actually, if you work in a hospital you’re a leading authority on data visualization.

April 01, 2021

Article

Off to a Good Start: Nurse Preceptor Program Priorities and Best Practices

A comprehensive nurse preceptor program consists of structures and processes that are tied to two types of outcomes. There are no specific or prescriptive steps for developing a comprehensive program. Every organization will need to look at its culture, resources, and unique needs to determine the exact steps and content of its program. However, some universal guidelines and steps are helpful to consider when building a program from infancy.

April 01, 2021

Article

HealthStream Competency Center Customer Spotlight: Kettering Health Network

Kettering Health Network was facing several challenges, including effectively managing employee competencies, standardizing its education program, improving HCAHPS scores, minimizing training inefficiencies, and improving its accreditation process. Since partnering with HealthStream, Kettering has pursued multiple solutions and, as a result, experienced significant improvements.

April 01, 2021

Article

Learning From Patients: The Story of Ray

Every coach with a clinical background has a patient who has made a significant impact on his or her life--one who, while in the role of patient, has been the teacher. Ray* was that patient for me.

April 01, 2021

Article

The Intentional Pursuit of Your Best Healthcare Employees

There are dozens of statistics on healthcare turnover. Regardless of which figure one cites, they all point to the fact that adequate staffing is a serious issue affecting providers everywhere. It is not going to be getting any easier in the foreseeable future. There are a number of important elements to consider for a good retention strategy—this article does not attempt to explore them all. Instead, it focuses on what your organization can do to be proactive and stay ahead of the curve so your best employees stay your best employees—and don’t become someone else’s.

April 01, 2021

Article

Fear Stifles Healthcare Innovation

The biggest obstacle to innovation in an organization is fear. Fear limits a leader and keeps him or her from creating ideas or finding solutions that could positively alter or change the workplace. As a patient experience coach, I have spoken to many leaders who have great ideas but remain silent.

April 01, 2021

Article

Three Steps to Ensure Physician Alignment, Performance, and Career Satisfaction

No area has been so ignored in the push for healthcare reform as the need to prepare and position physicians to succeed—in their careers in the face of great changes, and as leaders and partners in changing the way care is delivered. The demands on physicians are changing at an unprecedented rate.

April 01, 2021

Article

Customer Uses HealthStream as a Foundation for Healthcare Onboarding

GHS faced the challenge of managing onboarding and compliance for its transient, non-employed staff—students, faculty, interns, contracted and agency staff, volunteers, affiliate physicians, and allied health professionals, who all needed orientation but were not officially employed by GHS. The hospital reduced training time for contracted new hires to 48 hours, allowing staff to be on the floor faster, resulting in cost savings by reducing staffing needs.

April 01, 2021

Article

The Financial Impact of Retention in Healthcare

For healthcare organizations, retention is critical in achieving patient-centered excellence. When retention suffers, the impact is felt across many hospital strategic priorities. Many organizations create a strategic goal around retention or employee turnover; however, retention matters, not in and of itself, but because of the outcome the goal produces.

April 01, 2021

Article

The Unique Issues of the Post-Acute Care World

The world of the post-acute care resident and family is the focus of much debate these days, but no one can debate the need for the care that these residents so richly deserve. Often this care is an indicator of employee engagement and commitment. Care providers interact with families who face fears, issues of safety, courtesy, respect and failure to meet expectations every day. How do you best address residents and families entering your facility with these fears?

April 01, 2021

Article

Value-Based Purchasing is on the Horizon for Home Health Agencies

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has published its proposal to implement a Home Health Value-based Purchasing model for Medicare-certified home health agencies (HHAs) in selected states starting in 2016. The model will test whether incentives for better care can improve outcomes in the delivery of home health services.

April 01, 2021

Article

Selecting the Best Chart for Your Healthcare Data

The best chart is usually not the newest, most elaborate, or most colorful. In fact, it's often the opposite. You don’t order a medical test for a patient just because you can--don’t just use the sexiest chart available either. So, how do you determine which chart is right for your audience?

April 01, 2021