Hospitals are the backbones of healthcare in the communities that they serve. But delivering quality healthcare services is only one piece of the operational puzzle of running a hospital. Escalating costs and increasing emergency demand means that managers must keep operations and financial performance front of mind in order to ensure long-term sustainability and access. This can also include properly handling billing audits and other services. Hospital consulting services help managers and hospital leadership prepare for the future by building effective, agile plans today.
Understanding Community Hospital Needs
According to some estimates, some 800 community hospitals are at risk of closure — and 40% of those are rural hospitals that are often the primary source of healthcare for their communities. Community hospitals often face challenges meeting financial, operational, and quality of care expectations. In addition to these roadblocks to sustainability, community hospitals are now facing staffing burnout and shortages as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
With healthcare costs on the rise, community hospitals will have to develop agile responses to address several important areas:
Hospital productivity:
Hospitals are energy-intensive institutions and the cost of building maintenance, supplies, and amenities is not expected to decrease any time soon. Hospitals will have to develop strategies to optimize resources to meet demand without compromising quality of care.
Health and safety:
Ensuring the health and safety of patients and staff must be a priority for modern community hospitals. This means that organizations will need to find solutions to supply chain roadblocks in order to provide adequate protective and sanitization equipment.
Communication:
In order to more efficiently and effectively function, hospitals will need to address breakdowns in communication inter-departmentally, as well as with specialists and primary care providers. Hospitals will need to modernize and take advantage of innovative, cutting-edge technological solutions in order to streamline communication and mitigate operational inefficiencies.
Regulatory compliance:
Data security and patient privacy protection regulations are just two areas that can often hinder efforts to improve operational efficiency. Furthermore, noncompliance with regulatory standards can result in costly fines, disruption in service, and poor patient care.
Hospital Consulting Services
Long-term sustainability and maintaining community access to healthcare require big-picture insight into where your hospital is today and where it can go in the future. Our goal is to ensure continued viability by leveraging innovative solutions and modern technology in order to provide high-quality care that does not overstrain limited fiscal and human resources.
Our consulting process is a tiered approach that takes into account existing resources — their limitations and opportunities for growth — and develops optimized strategies for expansive sustainability.
The Hospital Consulting Process
Assessment Phase — Our hospital consultants examine your current infrastructure, processes, and procedures in order to identify roadblocks to growth. We design a solution-oriented plan and implementation strategy to seamlessly execute targeted goals:
- Operational improvements: we identify roadblocks to efficiency and develop processes to streamline core functions.
- Business planning: we work with hospital leadership teams to develop forecasting models that help identify opportunities for development and growth; contingency planning, and revenue growth.
- Modernization: technological innovation improves workflow, performance, and patient satisfaction. We develop strategies that target areas that can benefit from modernization and implement cutting-edge solutions that meet regulatory compliance standards.
- Clinical optimization: at the core of community hospitals is clinical care. We identify gaps in current protocols and design strategies that will meet the growing demands for modernized approaches to healing, in order to improve quality of care and patient satisfaction.
Strategic Planning Phase — Our consultants, working in conjunction with hospital leadership, develop strategies that will position the organization to boost productivity, improve logistics, and prime hospitals for optimized and sustainable growth. During the planning phase, our consultants will develop an implementation and rollout blueprint for a seamless transition to new workflows and processes.
Implementation Phase — Our consultants will work hand-in-hand with the leadership teams to ensure the successful implementation of the solution pathway. We work with hospital staff to engage their cooperation and interdepartmental participation. This is a necessary component to the long-term growth of any organization to improve communication and teamwork.
Benefits of Hospital Consulting
For many healthcare organizations, especially hospitals, simply keeping the lights on and doors open leaves little room to adequately address the needs of a growing organization. Consulting takes the guesswork and stress out of modernizing your organization. It does so while ensuring that you will be primed for continued sustainability and growth. Additionally, consulting helps organizations:
- Improve performance across departments
- Reduce fiscal waste
- Modernize healthcare offerings
- Streamline operational processes
- Improve oversight
- Generate greater patient satisfaction
Hospital Consulting Services in South Florida
There will always be a need for community hospitals and healthcare. However, hospitals cannot continue to use outmoded solutions to address modern problems. Healthcare in the 21st century requires an agile, responsive and innovative approach that allows for continued growth and sustainability. In order to meet the demands of modern healthcare needs, we help hospitals prepare for the future. To find out more about our hospital consulting services, and billing audits, and to schedule your consultation, contact us today at 954-461-8583.
