Hospitals Need a Strategic Plan for Innovation

Innovation can enhance every aspect of your health system, from room size to parking to food and telehealth.

In a disruptive healthcare environment, the hospitals are willing to be creative, take risks, step outside of their comfort zone and serve their patients, ultimately delivering enhanced patient outcomes.

In my experience, the benefits of innovation cannot be overstated. For example, although healthcare is highly regulated, there is always room for new ideas to enhance patient care and reduce costs.

Here are some examples that illustrate how you might introduce innovation into your hospital:

Your hospital’s innovation must match the needs of your community, and each community is unique. However, what might prove effective in a city environment cannot necessarily be replicated successfully in a rural area.

The following examples provide ideas for innovation:

Patient advocates: A New York hospital seeking to improve the experience of their patients’ families provided patient advocates to guide visitors through the hospital. In these circumstances, patient advocates may fulfill several functions, for example:

A practical approach to the parking lot: Visiting large hospitals can be a daunting experience for patients. Faced with the challenges of an extensive parking lot, one Georgia-based client of VIE Healthcare hired a member of staff to address this issue. The unique role was to collect patients and visitors from the parking lot in a golf cart and transport them to their appropriate clinic. In this case, the anxiety of locating a specific department was eliminated, and the patient experience was significantly enhanced.

A new approach to food: Introducing more nutritious or appropriate food is another growing healthcare innovation area. Food outlets such as Subway have previously been introduced into hospitals to provide healthier food options. Alternatively, hospitals may bring in specific local foods appropriate to their community.

Adding new services to meet specific patient needs demonstrates how highly the patient experience ranks on your hospital’s list of priorities.

Telehealth is changing today’s healthcare landscape, from online patient portals and virtual visits to remote monitoring, wearable devices, and personal health apps.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) defines telehealth as:

“…the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support and promote long-distance clinical healthcare, patient and professional health-related education, public health, and health administration. “
The benefits of telehealth include:

For patients: Telehealth eliminates travel expenses and waiting times, extends access to specialists consultants, and can reduce medical costs.

For hospitals: By innovating in telehealth or telemedicine, revenue can be increased, fewer appointments are missed or canceled, and patient follow-up is improved, together with health outcomes.
While reimbursement issues relating to telehealth still exist, your organization can begin to introduce initiatives, such as:

Widespread adoption of telehealth is relatively limited but predicted to increase.

As technology evolves so rapidly, training employees to use technologies appropriately can become an obstacle for some hospitals.

Innovation can enhance every aspect of your health system, from room size to parking to food and telehealth.

My question to you is, how can your hospital introduce innovation to improve the service offered to your patients and their families and enhance the patient experience?

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