Amnis shows that transforming healthcare services involves more that just patients
Improvements in quality for patients, along with improvements in service productivity, can be achieved at the same time as improvements in staff morale. This has been the experience of the specialist healthcare quality, innovation and productivity improvement enabler, Amnis.
“In one example in Emergency Care from a single ‘Improvement Event’, a team released some 11,500 hours a year of time, under guidance from Amnis’ professional transformation and Lean team,” revealed Mark Eaton, managing director of Amnis.
“Of course, this time was reinvested in care – with resulting benefits for both patients and staff.”
The team also managed to reduce admissions into an assessment unit by 65 per cent.
Three months later, this new performance level has been sustained and staff absence rates have also dropped by 45 per cent.
Agency staffing costs have dropped by 42 per cent and the number of adverse incidents has also fallen. In addition, a recent staff survey has shown a steep rise in overall job satisfaction.
According to Eaton: “Our considerable experience of enabling change in the healthcare sector leads us to conclude that any improvement activities that are not focused on both staff and patients are liable to fail.”
While it is vital to have a health service that is focused on patients and service users, Eaton believes that it is impossible to make that health service effective without the cooperation and input of front-line staff.
He further believes that many services that don't work well for patients also don't work well for staff.
“Effective processes are ones that not only engage front-line teams in their design and transformation, but also where the benefits are realised by staff as well as patients,” Eaton explained. “The knock-on effect of this can be seen in reduced absence rates, labour turnover rates and agency spending - as well as in an increase in patient and staff satisfaction.
“Through engaging staff in the redesign of services and giving them the capability to lead the changes for themselves - both in terms of time and skills - it is possible to transform both the efficiency of front-line care and also the morale of staff.”
For more information, visit Amnis at www.amnis.uk.com, email [email protected] or call 0870 446 1002.
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