Calling all doctors, wanna get engaged?
By: Rick Ebken, MD
Oh, have you met ISO 9001? Too forward, too personal? Not really; let me introduce you to the very engaging ISO 9001, a way of raising hospital accreditation to even higher standards.
Full physician “engagement” with the hospital’s quality management system is paramount in allowing us to attain the most efficient levels of performance and the best outcomes (the latter are now becoming increasingly reimbursement-incentivized, as you know!).
Oh, have you met ISO 9001? Too forward, too personal? Not really; let me introduce you to the very engaging ISO 9001, a way of raising hospital accreditation to even higher standards.
Full physician “engagement” with the hospital’s quality management system is paramount in allowing us to attain the most efficient levels of performance and the best outcomes (the latter are now becoming increasingly reimbursement-incentivized, as you know!).
For healthcare facilities to provide needed services, CMS certified “compliance based” accreditation is mandatory and a hospital quality management system (ISO 9001), new to healthcare, has been coupled with that process by DNV-GL. The ISO 9001 hospital quality management system is “performance based”, and offers the pathway to obtain improved consistency of service, continual process improvement, and, foremost, patient satisfaction.
Until I became involved with hospital accreditation and the ISO 9001 methodology, I had no real understanding of how many other factors actually impacted my “personal” outcomes, and for which I was ultimately held accountable. So why I should become “engaged” with the overall accreditation/quality management processes of my hospital became crystal clear. All of us want to provide the best patient care possible and with the ISO system, which is a new way of thinking and not just a new set of regulations, this becomes a reality. We, as physicians, are a critical lynch pin with administration, nursing, department heads, and an ISO representative in establishing this new way of living our professional lives. And now the challenge: To gain momentum, forward thinking is clearly required and, when fully implemented, will definitely provide personal rewards for all healthcare partners, but most importantly for our patients.
So, what really is this ISO 9001? The beginnings of ISO 9001 were in the product industry, but in the mid 1990’s it entered healthcare and other service organizations creating significant positive outcomes. This system provides a platform to raise benchmarks, force accountability, and proactively create a climate of preventive versus corrective actions promoting both efficiency and reduced liability (average out of court settlement for medical malpractice in 2012 was $360,000 and for cases going to court, ~$800,000). This then ensures the “business health” of the hospital and the medical staff going forward, reinforcing the truth in the adage, “no margin, no mission”!
My hope is that this brief “teaser” for ISO 9001 may stimulate your interest in acquiring the specifics of “what to do” to establish a living ISO 9001 system in your hospital. Most importantly, the “how to do”
phase is the responsibility (and privilege) of the hospital community and therefore provides a personal opportunity for us physicians to contribute that forward thinking needed to individualize the program for our specific organization as the process matures. These details await additional shared education as an implementation timeline is created to meet your own hospital’s needs.
“Engagement” will not only be economically practical, but also intellectually rewarding.
BECOME “ENGAGED”!
Rick Ebken, MD, is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and an ISO 9001 Lead Auditor/Trainer. Dr. Ebken is also a Diplomat of American Board of ME, a former accreditation Surveyor for DNVGL Healthcare, Healthcare provider, instructor, Federal Aviation Medical Examiner and NCDRC Certified Superior Court Mediator. He is passionate about moving medicine from a corrective position to a more preventive medicine with the structure of ISO 9001.
Until I became involved with hospital accreditation and the ISO 9001 methodology, I had no real understanding of how many other factors actually impacted my “personal” outcomes, and for which I was ultimately held accountable. So why I should become “engaged” with the overall accreditation/quality management processes of my hospital became crystal clear. All of us want to provide the best patient care possible and with the ISO system, which is a new way of thinking and not just a new set of regulations, this becomes a reality. We, as physicians, are a critical lynch pin with administration, nursing, department heads, and an ISO representative in establishing this new way of living our professional lives. And now the challenge: To gain momentum, forward thinking is clearly required and, when fully implemented, will definitely provide personal rewards for all healthcare partners, but most importantly for our patients.
So, what really is this ISO 9001? The beginnings of ISO 9001 were in the product industry, but in the mid 1990’s it entered healthcare and other service organizations creating significant positive outcomes. This system provides a platform to raise benchmarks, force accountability, and proactively create a climate of preventive versus corrective actions promoting both efficiency and reduced liability (average out of court settlement for medical malpractice in 2012 was $360,000 and for cases going to court, ~$800,000). This then ensures the “business health” of the hospital and the medical staff going forward, reinforcing the truth in the adage, “no margin, no mission”!
My hope is that this brief “teaser” for ISO 9001 may stimulate your interest in acquiring the specifics of “what to do” to establish a living ISO 9001 system in your hospital. Most importantly, the “how to do”
phase is the responsibility (and privilege) of the hospital community and therefore provides a personal opportunity for us physicians to contribute that forward thinking needed to individualize the program for our specific organization as the process matures. These details await additional shared education as an implementation timeline is created to meet your own hospital’s needs.
“Engagement” will not only be economically practical, but also intellectually rewarding.
BECOME “ENGAGED”!
Rick Ebken, MD, is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and an ISO 9001 Lead Auditor/Trainer. Dr. Ebken is also a Diplomat of American Board of ME, a former accreditation Surveyor for DNVGL Healthcare, Healthcare provider, instructor, Federal Aviation Medical Examiner and NCDRC Certified Superior Court Mediator. He is passionate about moving medicine from a corrective position to a more preventive medicine with the structure of ISO 9001.