The Writing is on the Wall !

Normally when you hear the term "The writing is on the wall", there is a negative connotation to it.  Well, today I want to tell you that often in hospitals the term has a very positive meaning.  I would go so far as to say that if you don't see the writing on the wall at your hospital, you should ask why not....

Over the last year there has been an explosion of quality measures that are being posted on walls in the hospital where I work in Sunrise Health Region.   Things like balance score cards are posted on line.  This is a good thing, because the sooner we get transparent with quality measures and act on them, the sooner our patients will receive the quality of care that they have sometimes (dare I say - often) been denied in the past.

The Saskatchewan Ministry of Health has started implementing Lean projects in some health regions since 2006 and have expanded projects like "Releasing time to care" throughout wards in the province.

If you see these posts on the wall, don't just walk by (like I used to do), no - stop and have a look at what the frontline workers in the Saskatchewan Health Care System have been doing to improve the quality of the service they deliver.

I learned that in our hospital they are constantly measuring Patient experience, Provider Satisfaction, Effective Processes and Specific Initiatives like "falls prevention" on the medicine floors.  The results are posted there for everyone to see and every ward has their own "flavor".  See if you can pick the pediatric floor from the photos and videos below.

I saw the excitement when one of the nurses on the medical ward showed me their new organized supplies room.  (There are photographs on the bulletin boards too.)  They sorted it in color coded plastic containers.  The interesting part came when she told me the red containers have blood related things, the yellow containers have urine related things and so forth.

So the writing is on the wall - what next.  Well, the next steps are not to only focus on the numbers and the graphs, but rather to learn from the discussions that come from trying to understand the numbers and the graphs.