Conduct your own care improvement project
Conduct your own care improvement project
You don’t need to go to managed care college to improve care in your own practice, asserts John Wisniewski, MD, MHSA.
Wisniewski is director of the Managed Care College at Henry Ford Health System, a nine-month hands-on course to teach health care professionals how to better meet the needs of the managed care practice and population they serve.
Having structured lessons that accompany your improvement project may make it easier, but any health care professional can take on a project to improve patient care, he says.
"What you need is confidence and drive, and the ability to focus on the goal of improving your own learning and your care for the patient," he adds.
Start small, Wisniewski suggests. Find some area of your practice you would like to improve, come up with ways to make the improvements, institute changes, and measure your results.
Here are some tips for developing your own projects:
• Work with your colleagues. "This type of learning works best when done in a social setting. There is a tremendous amount we can learn from each other," Wisniewski says.
• Keep your goals moderate. Don’t expect so much of yourself that you become frustrated.
• Recognize that there is not a right or wrong way of doing things, only consequences of choice. "If you’re looking for the one best way or right way, you’ll get frustrated," Wisniewski warns.
• Find the best solution you can and try it out.
• Recognize that learning doesn’t stop in the professional school.
• Be open to new ideas. "There is a wealth of new information that comes to us, not just within our own profession but from other disciplines and other industries that have enormous applications inside health care," Wisniewski says.
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