Making Practices too LEAN to fail
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| Justine Cadet, Editorial Director |
Through a variety of breakout sessions, lectures and poster presentations, the conference provides advice and case studies to help practices financially fortify themselves without cutting staff.
“If practices are not adopting business models and processes, like Lean or Six Sigma, they are not establishing a sustainable trajectory,” explained Bill Algee, BSRT, AHRA annual meeting design team chair and radiology manager at Columbus Regional Hospital in Columbus, Ind.
To achieve these ends, AHRA collaborated with the Radiology Business Management Association to present an upgraded Practice Management Track, with some sessions highlighted below, and cover topics as broad as healthcare reform and as specific as workflow-based staffing.
Also, via the theme for AHRA's poster session—“performance improvement”—various facilities are demonstrating how they achieved measurable outcomes. The examples range from patient satisfaction, new technology, Six Sigma, Lean, safety, turnaround times, process times, results reporting, costs, as well as false negatives/ positives.
In addition, AHRA is launching its Executive Leadership and Mentoring program during the three-day meeting, which is a ‘hands-on’ practical learning program and will incorporate 12 months of personal mentoring to assist radiology leaders in applying new skills and business acumen to solving their real-world issues and challenges.
While the conference is geared to healthcare leaders, Algee stressed the importance of empowering employees. “The staff needs to believe that they are part of this process improvement for a better business process as well as patient outcomes to keep them engaged,” he said.
Look for our coverage from the meeting in next week’s newsletter.
Justine Cadet
jcadet@trimedmedia.com