Optimizing operations is critical for revenue, customer satisfaction, fulfilled team members and less staff turnover.
Every organization no matter what size, or niche, faces challenges during periods of growth and change.
And a major challenge for small- and medium-size businesses, in particular, is maintaining efficient operations across front and back office processes and teams that tie in with procedures used by both your hands-on staff and stakeholders.
Leadership should make this a priority because optimizing operations is critical for revenue, reflects customer satisfaction levels, and often results in fulfilled team members and less staff turnover.
A December 2021 survey of 370 business leaders by MIT/Sloan Management Review found operations strategy for all types of business operations high on nearly all of their lists.
“The vast majority of survey respondents view operational transformation as an urgent priority, and most of those already have change initiatives underway. But the survey findings also indicate that these companies must address key challenges to ensure that those initiatives actually reach their goals,”
MITSloan reported (emphasis added). MITSloan spoke to leaders from consumer product companies and their responses hold true across many business sectors, including healthcare operations.
One surprising result was that while 98% of leaders consider operations transformation a priority:
Most lack clear priorities for transformation.
Most believe they can transform on their own, without assistance from partners or collaborative ecosystems.
Many seem unsure about why they’re transforming in the first place.
Without solid priorities and external expertise, these companies’ transformation efforts may fall short of their goals.
How do you steer your business, or clinic, towards a best-in-class operations strategy that boosts customers and staff satisfaction, financial performance and strengthens the foundational bones of your organization? It helps to ask the right questions, which is a winning strategy used by Boost Midwest.
For all industries, embracing new technology, including artificial intelligence-powered tech, is critical, industry experts say.
For healthcare clinics, these new approaches will be supported by enhanced and new technologies, standards in electronic records, some of which will take effect in 2022. So, change is coming for healthcare and standard businesses, whether from their own growth or changes, legal changes or both.
“General health care will be forever reimagined to consider hybrid ways of approaching services,” Danah Boyd, Founder And President of the Data & Society Research Institute and Principal Researcher at Microsoft, stated in a PEW Foundation study published in February on what the “new normal” will look like in 2025.
This means that creating an operations strategy is more critical than ever.
Clinic-ology and Boost Midwest work with healthcare organizations and high-growth businesses on all levels of operations, using best practices from data analysis to key performance indicators (KPIs) that show where your operations are now and where they can be improved.
For healthcare practices, Boost Midwest’s sister company Clinic-ology, reviews all levels of operations, including:
Medical records.
Internal and external communication.
Patient scheduling.
Insurance billing.
Storage of physician notes and patient instructions.
Take for example, supply chain shortages, a recent and critical issue for many businesses and healthcare organizations.
“Hospitals and health systems have faced major issues with their supply chains, from personal protective equipment shortages at the start of the pandemic to a lack of crutches now,” Becker Hospital Review recently reported. “Ninety-nine percent of hospitals and health systems report challenges in supply procurement as of October 2021.”
Data that has proven critical in managing supply chain issues across many industries include:
The geographic area(s) relied on for supplies.
Whether one or multiple transportation modes are used.
Cross-training of employees to allow a quick pivot.
A cohesive supply chain strategy.
Clinic-ology and Boost Midwest rely on best practices to ensure that operations strategies are future-forward so that clients are able to quickly adjust to unexpected changes. Here, communication processes are also key. And the overall three-step approach to change management — analyze, innovate, and manage — is utilized for communication processes as well. We look at all communication methods and tools in use to streamline communications and avoid overlaps, mis-communications, and wasted search times.
Most importantly, communications rooted in best practices help avoid medical errors, in a field where an estimated 80% of medical errors result from miscommunication among healthcare teams, according to the Joint Commission, which accredits and certifies over 22,000 healthcare organizations and programs in the United States.
To see the full scope and the level of detail, arrange for a free consultation with Boost Midwest. We offer continuing support following the audit although many of our clients find they are ready to move forward on their own.
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Ready to learn more about how Boost Midwest can help you optimize your project management and operations?
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