Hospital Improvement: Clinical and Business Solutions
To achieve sustainable improvements in hospitals, there is a need to align clinical as well as business approaches to patients’ care, cost, and payment systems. One way is to implement evidence-based clinical practices and utilize health information technology (HIT) to enhance care delivery. For example, electronic health records (EHRs) and clinical decision support systems (CDSS) improve the orders of work, thus lowering the likelihood of medical mistakes and adverse occurrences (Alcalde-Rubio et al., 2020). Another way is the use of patient-centered medical homes (PCMH) and accountable care organizations (ACOs) which involve integrated care mechanisms or systems that enhance continuity of care, especially for patients with chronic illnesses, because the patient benefits from comprehensive, coordinated care and hence have fewer hospital re-admissions (Alcalde-Rubio et al., 2020). These measures ensure that quality evidence-based care is delivered, unnecessary interventions are avoided, and organizational efficiency is improved, thus solving clinical and financial issues in healthcare organizations.

Hospitals also need to work on cost containment and payment methods to reduce costs and improve the quality of patients’ experience. Bundled payment systems and pay-for-performance plans encourage cost containment and effective quality care delivery, improving the patient’s health (De Ramon Fernandez et al., 2020). Secondly, applying lean management and using predictive analytics can help decrease the rates of operational costs in the hospital and provide better resource allocation, which will help achieve the cost reduction goal (De Ramon Fernandez et al., 2020). Also, patient engagement activities like shared decision-making, digital health, and telehealth increase patients’ satisfaction and trust, thus adherence to treatment plans and financial performance (De Ramon Fernandez et al., 2020). These strategies can be integrated to ensure a sustainable healthcare system that considers the financial aspect and delivers high-quality services to the patients.

References
Alcalde-Rubio, L., Hernández-Aguado, I., Parker, L. A., Bueno-Vergara, E., & Chilet-Rosell, E. (2020). Gender disparities in clinical practice: Are there any solutions? A scoping review of interventions to overcome or reduce gender bias in clinical practice. International journal for equity in health, 19, 1-8. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12939-020-01283-4Links to an external site.

De Ramon Fernandez, A., Ruiz Fernandez, D., & Sabuco Garcia, Y. (2020). Business Process Management for optimizing clinical processes: A systematic literature review. Health informatics journal, 26(2), 1305-1320. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1460458219877092