One Thing Hospitals Can Do to Improve HAC Now

Keeping patients safe from events that should never happen in hospitals can be a hot topic for conversation. Many people who don't work in hospitals react immediately stating they have been affected personally or have experienced the harm that a hospital-acquired condition (HAC) can bring second hand through family and friends. Healthcare leaders express frustration with HAC persistence after trying every performance improvement tool in the book. Both groups often ask what is the one thing hospitals can do now to fix this chronic problem.

While no magic bullet exists, one key finding from research with top performing hospitals enlightens a great place to start. Looking through a strategic management lens, does your organization position quality and safety as a directional strategy or as an adaptive, competitive one? If your organization has as its premise “safety and quality is who we are” this sets the direction for every decision made and focus will never be lost. If safety and quality are instead a “top priority” this is an adaptive or competitive strategic stance and efforts will expand, contract, and change over time. (1)

The strategic management position in which you find your hospital is not right or wrong. Everyone does not need to have safety and quality as a directional strategy. Actually, with tight operating margins and many factors competing for a hospital to be viable financially, having safety and quality as an adaptive strategy can make sense. The key is understanding the implications. If you have an adaptive or competitive strategic standpoint be prepared for your safety and quality systems to have changes in focus and thus resources over time. This requires planning carefully to have patient outcomes not reliant on resources subject to adaptive changes. (1) Does this give you a good place to start? Please share your thoughts.

1. Doolittle, Tammy, "Avoiding Hospital-Acquired Conditions: A Qualitative Analysis of Early Top Performers" (2016). Dissertations. 37. https://digital.sandiego.edu/dissertations/37