Say you want to train everyone at a hospital on a best practice or keep them informed on what you're doing so that they can help. You probably won't succeed if you keep your ideas to yourself.
Welcome back to our regular round-up of five healthcare news articles that you need to be reading this week. Sometimes there are more than five. (Okay, most times.)
This week we seemed to read over and over that what makes an initiative work - or fall apart - is how much collaboration goes into it. Sometimes that means working within a single provider to optimize the supply chain processes or patient care training.
And sometimes that means reaching out to other healthcare providers to pool resources or - horror of horrors - working with regulators to improve everyone's healthcare.
On to the news:
- At the same time that PPE manufacturers are shutting down or decreasing output across the country, Michigan nurses are facing significant PPE shortages. Part of that is regulatory guidance against using unapproved PPE, but the biggest reason is one you've probably heard before (from us)...
- Visibility isn't just important across the various links in the supply chain. It's crucial within an organization. One good thing to come out of the last year is increased collaboration between the C-suite and supply chain teams, but there's plenty of room for improvement.
- These, as with all conversations, have to be two-way. Because top-down initiatives that overburden healthcare providers - like the California proposal for hospitals to come up with "hero pay" somehow - won't work.
- So if healthcare pros want to prioritize something important to them like equity or sustainability, collaboration across an organization is the key to lasting, impactful change. And, as we've discussed before, equity and sustainability are key to community health.
- Take, for example, the implementation of bias training for all Michigan healthcare workers. Though the effort began a year ago, it's become recently obvious how necessary it is.
More news in our Five To Save newsletter. Sign up to get your fix. Or don't. Up to you. We're just trying to collaborate over here, but that does cooperation on both sides.