Re: Quality hospitals

["Bob and Sherry Whitish" <ytnbear@mhtc.net>]

Malcolm (and all),

I'm a new DEN participant, so I may be missing previous messages associated
with this message, but I feel the best way to get involved in something is
to get your feet wet (so long as no one is going to get injured).

>From what I can ascertain from the posting Malcolm made, I would suggest
begining to gather process data.  I'd agree you're 'pretty acurate' when you
say the number of ER admissions are pretty much out of your control--though
I have read about wellness training and encouragement of healthy lifestyles
and regular excercise to fend of a lot of poor health and illness, but I
digress..I agree your control over traumatic ER visits is up to a higher
power than we.  What you do have control over are such things as the amount
of time a person spends in he ER before being seen by a receptionist, a
Nurse, a Doctor.  The time it takes from "walk-in" to receiving a room,
receiving treatment  etc.  You could track the satisfaction of the patients,
their families.  You could track the comfortlevel of the friends and
relatives while a patient is being cared for.

There are a lot of things that you may have little control over, but if you
get in and dig, I think you'd find a lot more that could be analyzed for
improvement.  This is only a very short list from someone with no hospital
knowledge (except for a few "stupid human tricks" I've partaken in that
landed me in the ER).  Think what you could gather and analyze if you were
to use the staff and patients of the ER and the expertise they bring to the
job.

Just my rantings,
Bob Whitish
ytnbear@mhtc.net