Sharing Best Practices

An important aspect of our methodology is the sharing of any best practices we discover. This is nearly always highly valued by clients since they can obtain insights unavailable from any single site-specific study. We value it because it allows us to have a single base methodology built upon best practices as they are identified and evolve, instead of having to maintain a number of site-specific flavors.

Best practices may address ways of handling supplies—physical processes—or they may deal with related aspects such as stocking locations, bar coding practices, space management, and ordering practices—management processes.

Finding new and better ways to manage a supply chain is generally hard and costly. It is hugely inefficient to have to do this in each hospital. Worse yet, a single hospital may find only a very few of the best ways. Sharing best practices among a number of hospitals moves vital knowledge from its source to everyone else. The costs of innovating decrease for all.

Defining "Best"

Things can get a little tricky here. What is best for you may not be best for me because we have substantially different situations, priorities and capabilities.

This leads naturally to sets of practices that have proven to be valuable within a certain context. Defining that context accurately is extremely important. "Best" becomes "best within context". You may adopt a practice that is clearly not "best" among the set of alternatives available but you know that it is best within the situation you have.

Best practice content consequently becomes a set of case studies that describe the situation, what was done, and what the results were. The better case studies also have a "lessons learned" section.

We will prepare these case studies as we identify an especially valuable or important action initiative among our clients. In each case, of course, the client will be able to review the case draft and suggest changes and corrections.

Practice:   6. Realizing Cost Savings

And finally, a reality check: Realizing your cost savings will require headcount reductions and tackling physician preference items ... Realizing Cost Savings ...

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Sharing Ideas

Much has been made in recent years of adopting best practices. Often this is not done critically enough, resulting in a bad fit and disappointing results.

As argued at the left, "best" is a pretty vague criterion. What is more important is the sharing of ideas, along with what we did and what happened.

Cases are especially effective in sharing of ideas. Instead of having to decide which practice in a set is "best", we can simply offer each case as an example.

This allows idea sharing and sharing of vital lessons about what worked, what didn't work, and the all-important why's.