One of the great strengths of people working in the healthcare sector is that they really know their sector. They are also highly skilled and talented, often highly qualified and extremely knowledgeable.
Given these great foundations one might wonder why making change, service improvement and innovation is such a struggle.
One of the real challenges in a lot of organisations is that people become so attached to the norms or the ways things are done around here that their creativity goes out the window.
What I have noticed is that it is often much easier to generate ideas and be more creative and innovative when you move from expert to advisor.
Ask yourself what advice would I give if I was on the outside looking in?
Let’s take a service that we all use periodically, a visit to the GP. While we all know that they have a difficult job and deliver a good service, is that service really centred around convenience for the patient.
Now we all know that 24 hour opening is not really an option or even necessary. On the other hand maybe some late night opening an evening or two a week might be beneficial.
It is the same with outpatient appointments that are traditionally in the morning or afternoon. Would evening or even weekend outpatient appointments result in lower did not attend rates.
We all know that there is a tremendous amount of value from standing back and thinking about how we might do things differently. At the same time it is something that is not going to happen unless it becomes priority. The time will never magically appear.
Being able to look at the way an organisation or a service works through the eyes of an outsider really can help the organisation to make a step change in performance, productivity and user satisfaction.
So what would need to happen to start to adopt this approach?
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