i-Collaboration Solutions for Hospitals Healthcare: Life & Death Industry in Critical Condition 1:1 Corporation is focused on hospitals because they are critically important to our society, under extreme pressure, and because the 1:1 i-Collaboration™ solution can help hospitals improve performance and minimize medical errors by leveraging an amazing source of expertise – their frontline staff.

Unlike any other approach, the 1:1 solution enables hospital management to more fully tap the knowledge and goodwill of their staff, particularly nurses & physicians, to tackle the challenges at hand, including:

• Patient Care Quality
• Patient & Staff Safety
• Medical Errors / “Never Events”
• RN Productivity
• Patient Costs & Margins
• Staff Retention & Recruiting

If there were ever a time for hospital management to engage a highly efficient, effective collaborative process with everyone in its organization, it is now.

What If?

What would be the benefit if your hospital’s management could . . .

• Continually focus the staff on care quality, safety & medical errors, productivity & cost improvement?
• Rely on the staff for meaningful, actionable recommendations aimed at improving these areas?
• Employ a collaborative process everyone likes and embraces for its speed, simplicity and impact?
• Sort out the most important needs and initiate corrective action in just a couple of weeks?
• Continually and systematically act on the most critical few recommendations quarter after quarter?

How much margin uplift could this collaborative process affect . . . 10%? 15%? 20%?

The 1:1 i-Collaboration Solution

The 1:1 solution combines process and technology with motivational psychology and effective communications in an ongoing business process that continually drives performance improvement.  It employs innovative patent-pending software, which rapidly collects improvement recommendations from the staff, and sorts out the most desired actions based on the number of votes and the value.

The hosted 1:1 i-Collaboration solution involves:

• Sensitizing the staff to performance and error prevention via the proprietary 1:1 Performance Model Database™ that includes all the key performance factors and their components, as well as those most desired actions for a component targeted for improvement by a meaningful percentage of participants.
• Asking staff what most needs to be done via a fast, personalized Internet-based interview, the 1:1 i-Interview™, which enables participants to quickly construct recommendations from a comprehensive set of menus.
• Employing 1:1 Impact Analytics™ tailored to each hospital’s priorities and which aggregates, scores, sorts out and reports the highest impact opportunities in real time without error or omission.
• Management being able to take timely action and keeping the staff informed, confident they are doing what the staff in aggregate is telling them to do, and have the numbers to back them up.
• Repeating this process to keep the staff constantly focused on improving patient care quality and safety, increasing productivity and reducing costs, and to see how their actions are paying off.

Being a hosted solution, there’s no software or hardware to install.  All we need are the staff email addresses; so there’s no long wait.

The Principles of Effective Collaboration + Technology

The 1:1 i-Collaboration solution applies technology to the Principles of Effective Collaboration and in effect super-charges their power. Here is how the 1:1 solution tools align with those principles:

1. Mutual Respect:  Management gives staff with the freedom to focus only on what is most important to them via the i-Interview; and the staff in turn provides management with all the data needed to take timely action.
2. Like Knowledge & Understanding:  The Performance Model Database addresses everything that impacts performance via a drill-down tree-structure; the staff’s role is to provide recommendations; and management’s role is to take timely action and keep the organization up-to-date.
3. Common Goals & Objectives:  The goal of the 1:1 solution is to continually improve hospital performance by identifying & quantifying ways to improve quality and accreditation, reduce liability risks and lower costs.
4. Effective Communications:  The i-Interview provides clear, concise, complete information including what needs to change, how, and the justification; nothing is missed or misinterpreted.
5. Constructive Process:  The i-Interview focuses on corrective action, not measurement; there are no questions to trigger negative feelings and responses that stymie communications and problem solving.
6. Participative Decision-Making:  The Impact Analytics software is numbers-driven with everyone having an equal voice and management having the ability to tweak weightings based on its priorities.
7. Meaningful Results:  The 1:1 i-Collaboration solution produces reliable, immediately actionable, high impact recommendations that speed action, accelerate benefit realization and slash the high cost of lost opportunities.

The 1:1 Benefits That Compound

Hospital management can justify the 1:1solution if it believes in the aggregate wisdom of the staff, particularly the nurses & physicians, and is willing to invest in the process and people needed to take timely corrective action.  In addition to pinpointing and quantifying desired actions, the 1:1 solution saves management considerable time by:

• Clearing their “plate” of performance improvement “opportunities” that have little or no impact
• Reducing the number of focus groups / roundtables that are often hijacked by the loudest voice
• Minimizing the need to explain management inaction on things nurses & physicians see as important
• Slashing the time spent in meetings trying to prioritize enhancement opportunities with no hard data

The 1:1 i-Collaboration solution gives management more time to actually do something about their challenges.  And although there is value in having more action time, 1:1’s greatest value is its ability to rapidly identify, quantify and “short list” the most important / critical needs on a consistent basis over time.

The 1:1 Value Proposition

Assume your hospital is currently realizing 2% net margins and that management feels the 1:1 solution could help them increase net margins by 10% to 2.2%; here is what the ROI would look like after 1:1 costs:

The above figures address the economic benefits that will be realized by taking timely corrective actions and their impact on accreditation and financial performance but not the financial liability of medical errors.  The cost of just one error could well-surpass the highest amount shown, so maintaining staff focus in this area can pay enormous dividends.  Effective collaboration, that is well-received by the staff, can also produce quantifiable benefits in retention and recruiting.  With the cost of replacing an RN now at $60,000, improved retention and recruitment can pro-duce a high return on the modest 1:1 investment.  So in some ways, the 1:1 solution is an insurance policy that can pay for itself while helping the hospital to protect itself from catastrophic medical error liability.

Will the 1:1 Performance Model Work for Our Hospital?

Healthcare is a complex industry that requires considerable education and experience to make a mark.  1:1 Corporation has expertise in technology, process, motivational psychology and effective communications.  For the needed healthcare expertise, the Company has turned to those with the industry experience and insights needed to construct the first Healthcare Performance Model Database.

The unique 1:1 Healthcare Performance Model Database addresses Patient Care Units, Surgery & Procedures, Ancillary Services and all major medical conditions.

For each new client hospital, we simply select those functions and conditions it addresses and apply the hospital’s unique vernacular so its entire organization will be able to quickly recognize the terms.

Will the 1:1 i-Interview & Process Work for Our People?

Based on feedback from tens of thousands of people who have used the i-Interview to their advantage, it works well for nurses, technicians, aides, supervisors, managers, administrators and even physicians, because it:

• Puts each participant in the driver’s seat having them address only those areas important to them; they are free to say what needs to be improved, how and why via a fast user-friendly interface.
• Gives every participant, whether assertive or passive in nature, a voice, a clear and equal voice.
• Is simple, fast and addresses everything that affects care quality, safety, productivity and costs from the staff’s perspective.
• Provides a totally positive experience that shows respect for the participants’ knowledge and time and delivers a short list of high impact, complete, actionable recommendations to management in days.
• Ranks recommendations based on the aggregate voice of the organization, not the loudest or most assertive voice, via a fully participative, numbers-driven, error-free, real-time process.
• Provides management with hard data that speeds decisions and corrective action and which spares management the distraction of questionable requests. Management can therefore move quickly and effectively to achieve those results most desired by a meaningful number of staff members.

The 1:1 i-Collaboration solution gives everyone a win – nurses, physicians, technicians, aides, supervisors, managers, administrators, executives, and most importantly, patients.

Will There Be an Industry Performance Solutions Database?

It is very important that hospitals be able to look past their own experience and situation to other hospitals to:

• Preempt potential problems they have yet to experience
• See what other hospitals are focused on with respect to performance improvement
• Make sure their organizations are keeping up with the industry

The role of 1:1 Corporation is to provide processes and tools for highly effective performance improvement collaboration.  For the specialized healthcare and related technology expertise we have partnered with a great institution to develop a series of high value services:  The University of Wisconsin – Whitewater via Choton Basu, Ph.D., Computer Management Systems, and Director, Global Business Resource Center.  Our partnerships are aimed at developing these kinds of services:

• Industry Performance Database that will allow hospitals to compare their situations to others
• Research that correlates actions to results to identify the highest payback improvement opportunities
• Research that correlates performance components to care quality metrics and actions taken to results
• Research that correlates performance components to financial metrics and actions taken to results
• Social networking and Web 2.0 aimed at connecting healthcare professionals with common interests

As the 1:1 i-Collaboration solution is adopted by a critical mass of hospitals, these services will become a reality. And as more people work with the 1:1 data, services yet to be envisioned will also evolve, all with one purpose:

Help healthcare institutions continually improve overall performance on a first-things-first basis in the most timely, efficient, cost-effective manner.

What Will It Cost Our Hospital to Delay the 1:1 Decision?

Change requires confidence in the staff and the willingness to take on some risk.  However, no meaningful improvement ever happened without both. Be assured, the 1:1 set-up takes only a few of weeks and a handful of hours from the department heads.  All the department heads have to do for the quarterly interviews is review the short list, make decisions, suggest ways to improve the process, take timely action, and keep everyone up-to-date.  The i-Interview takes 10 minutes (per quarter), and can be done over a coffee break for zero cost

Every day the 1:1 Solution decision is put off, the hospital will be wasting money by not being more aggressive in: improving care quality, reducing medical error and patient cost liabilities, and improving staff productivity, retention and recruiting.

If management is in sync with the benefits, the cost of delay quickly adds up:

If you feel we’re on the right track, we would love to talk to you about your hospital’s specific situation and its numbers.  Contact us today!