Take one rehabilitation hospital, six Administrative
Directors, twenty department heads, one Executive
Medical Officer and one Executive Director,
mix with a great desire to improve process performance,
bake for two days and voila! Success!
Really? That's all it takes to have a successful
performance improvement initiative implementation?
Well, it's a great start. But it takes much
more. It takes an internal champion who has
the drive to make the implementation successful.
It takes upper management's buy-in from the
get-go. It also takes a proven performance improvement
application.
Let's take a look at how Burke Rehabilitation
Hospital got their performance improvement initiative
up and running. First, a bit of background…
Burke Rehabilitation Hospital (Burke) is a
free-standing, fully accredited rehabilitation
hospital which opened in 1915 from the funds
of the estate of John Masterson Burke. It sits
on 61 acres in White Plains, New York, in a
pleasant country setting. The main building
complex is a large courtyard with brick buildings
on each side connected with covered walkways
and housing a cafeteria, bed units, and fitness
and physical therapy offices. The newer buildings
house the administration and research departments.
Two well-known movies have been filmed at this
location: Rear Window, starring Christopher
Reeve, and Regarding Henry with Harrison
Ford.
The hospital offers inpatient and outpatient
rehabilitation programs for a broad spectrum
of conditions, including stroke, brain or spinal
cord injuries; neurological conditions; knee
or hip replacement; limb amputation; pulmonary
or cardiac disease; and occupational, physical
or speech therapies.
The hospital is administered by Dr. Mary Beth
Walsh, Executive Medical Officer, and John Ryan,
Executive Director. There are six Administrative
Directors and 20 department heads, as mentioned
above.
Burke started their performance improvement
program by using Statit
Custom QC a couple of years ago. When it
became apparent that the organization needed
an enterprise-wide solution, Compliance Officer
Janet Herbold contacted the performance improvement
experts at Statit. President and CEO,
Tom Simas, gave Janet and her team a demonstration
of Statit
piMD, Statit's Performance
Indicator and Management Dashboard.
In December 2007, Burke Rehab purchased Statit
piMD and became a member of the Statit family.
The software was installed remotely in the
first quarter of 2008. Statit's Vice President
of Professional Services, Guy March, went onsite
for two days of training in early April. In
preparation for the training session, Ms. Herbold
and Kristen Bonistall, Clinical Research Analyst,
contacted each department head and put together
a spreadsheet detailing each of the performance
indicators the departments would be constructing
during the two-day training. This spreadsheet
contained the following information for each
indicator:
This spreadsheet was extremely helpful not
only for the Burke staff, but also for Guy when
showing the training attendees how to create
the indicators within the Statit piMD application.
Prior to the on-site training session and working
with Statit, Burke identified and prepared
several data sources. This early preparation
made it possible to get much more accomplished
in the two-day training session.
Training session attendees included two of
the six Administrative Directors and five of
the twenty department heads. All in all, fourteen
people attended the Statit piMD on-site training.
Each Indicator Administrator in the training
session had a list of performance indicators
they wanted to build and the data sources they
would use. Indicator Administrators create performance
indicators and format the output to best frame
the information being communicated. The training
session started with a review of the Statit
piMD system as a normal user would see it. This
helps the Indicator Administrators understand
how other Statit piMD users would see the results
of their work.
The role of the Indicator Expert was reviewed
next, detailing how an Expert has the responsibility
for reviewing the data read by Statit piMD and
"approving" the validity of the data.
A few organizational issues were covered, and
several other Statit piMD tools were reviewed.
Finally the process of building indicators was
ready to start.
In the second half of the first day, the group
started building indicators, each working on
the list of indicators they had identified.
Guy worked individually with the Indicator Administrators
to accomplish their tasks.
Burke had a good mix of different types of
indicators and different data sources. Several
times the group reviewed a particular indicator
to understand things like chart selection, the
use of Where Clauses or Expressions, and presentation
of the analysis chart.
By 3:45pm on the second day, the group had
93 indicators in process, 77 of which were marked
as complete. Ms Herbold had scheduled a 'Show-and-Tell'
in a large presentation room and invited guests.
The audience included John Ryan, Dr. Walsh and
the department heads that were unable to attend
the training session. Ms. Herbold made an excellent
presentation, giving everyone an idea of what
had been accomplished over the two days (and
in the preceding couple of months), and how
they planned to use the application going forward.
She explained how, using the indicators, they
can know that something might need attention
well before their standard quarterly reports
were generated.
One department head suggested that, in the
interest of transparency, they could mount a
large LCD screen behind the main desk that would
display a select group of Indicators. The department
heads agreed that this was a great idea and
discussed implementing screens in other functional
areas of the hospital as well.
The training session ended with a large decorated
cake that said, "Congratulations piMD Experts".
The staff at Burke really took this on-site
training session seriously!
The pre-training preparation, with Ms Herbold's
championship, was critical to the success of
Burke's implementation. Since the people in
the training session were the owners of the
measures that were being created, they knew
exactly what they wanted to see as a result.
The large number of usable indicators produced
by the end of the training session is really
a tribute to the dedication and hard work of
the people of Burke.
A strong champion, dedicated and committed
Indicator Admins and Experts, and carefully
planned pre-training preparation on Burke's
behalf along with Statit piMD's flexibility,
security and efficiency ensured the success
of the Statit piMD implementation and the Burke
Rehabilitation Hospital quality journey.
For more information on Statit's performance
improvement solutions and services, please call
(541) 752-4500 or send email to
.
