"But You're Not a Nurse...": Non-Clinicians and Clinical PI

Session
Clinical Performance Improvement

Author
Terry Dunn
Director
Quality & Performance Improvement
The Drake Center, Inc.

Description
The fundamental roles of healthcare providers are to treat illness, heal injury, and promote wellness, and clinicians are the only professionals who can lead this work...right? A panel of non-clinically-trained professionals now leading clinical PI efforts will share their stories.

Abstract
Healthcare has long been characterized by conflicting trends, perhaps never more so than today: a steady stream of new methods and technology, competitive pressures from direct and alternative providers, public insistence on transparency and the adoption of evidence-based practice, and stagnant or shrinking reimbursement requiring ever-greater efficiency.

Many organizations have continued to follow tradition, insisting that nursing or other clinicians oversee data collection and performance improvement efforts directed at improving patient outcomes, provider credentialing, and care coordination, while paying engineers and business professionals to use the same skills but aimed at "operational" or "financial" processes.

Engineers and business people have long worked beside the clinicians to evaluate and redesign the processes of care delivery--the "how" and the "how well" questions--but increasingly, these same professionals now have opportunities to dig into questions of effectiveness and efficacy(the "why's" and "what's").

In this panel, several engineers and others who've transitioned to clinically-focused roles will share their experience and insights for those interested in exploring these areas.