Utilisation improvement plans for avoidable hospital delays
Abstract
Providing optimal healthcare in the inpatient settings inevitably involves specific management strategies to keep costs at bay. While prices appear to drive the high-cost trends in the healthcare system with no feasible solution on the horizon, the overutilisation of services and goods worsens this scenario. Managing the length of stay and avoiding hospital delays are strategies essential to controlling clinical operating costs. Hospitals run software suites, specifically designed to capture and report on delays. Without departmental action plans, however, these strategies do not generate sustainable and continuous improvement. This paper complements the topic of avoidable hospital delays (AHDs) by describing the use of avoidable delay tracking systems and contributes to the body of knowledge with the development of utilisation improvement plans based on the type of trending AHDs. It also proposes splitting AHDs into clinical and non-clinical delays to better elucidate the type of action plans required to resolve these issues. The next step points to the development of clinical protocol and guidelines specific for AHDs as well as gathering indirect and direct data to quantify the weight of AHDs in hospital profits.
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Author's Biography
Jose R. Masip is a medical doctor with a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of the North in Colombia, and a Master of Public Health and International Business degree from Florida International University; he was recently conferred with a doctorate in Health Administration by the University of Phoenix, Arizona. Dr Masip has 20 years of international experience in the healthcare industry, having served in a variety of clinical and leadership roles such as medical practitioner, hospital manager, insurance regional director, public health chief officer, hospital medical director and graduate lecturer. He is currently an independent researcher and his goals in the decades ahead are to teach, research as well as contribute to society with knowledge through the lens of scientific inquiry. His research interests relate to ageing, hospital management, care coordination programmes, digital public health and bridging healthcare with other disciplines.
Citation
Masip, Jose R. (2020, September 1). Utilisation improvement plans for avoidable hospital delays. In the Management in Healthcare: A Peer-Reviewed Journal, Volume 5, Issue 1. https://doi.org/10.69554/HWSJ1953.
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