Reem's Profile

Also in my country we are facing now M&A trends in health care market.
I think in any industry this is a question to be answered ..
What is best for an Organisation to grow ?
Is it M&A ?
Is it growing organically ?
What’s the effect of M&A on the original brand ?
Are we going to keep our identity if we merge with other company ?
I have these questions in mind always as am watching other competitors growing through M&A
One competitor acquire another big brand, and this acquisition didn’t end up with good financial results for the first year at least, mainly due to the 2 big brands diluted them selves instead of creating one big brand. Plus the inefficient way the aqusition was managed which let many staff leave the Organisation after the M&A.

Another example is a big Organisation which is acquiring many small profitable companies, with really high prices, just to capture the market in a fast way. How sustainable this module is on the long run, is also something to look at.

For me personally am working towards organic green field growth, as I see more healthy for the Organisation future.

I think we need to be active in handling above three components.
For example
Is enhancing patient experience really mean decreasing operational efficiency ? Isn’t having better patient experience means having more satisfied patients, meaning a patients who will visit our facility again and recommend it to other patients which will increase the revenue as a result and will affect the efficiency positively later on ?
So in my opinion NO, enhancing patient experience doesn’t mean decreasing efficiency if we did it in a proper way ofcaurse.
What’s the reason behind staff resistance toward enhancing patient experience ?
We need to see their reasons and tackle the problems and solve it.
It need a change in the service culture in the hospital.
I always tell my staff.
All of them, has one responsibility. To make sure our patients are satisfied.
Patient satisfaction is not only due to successful surgery done to him, but also his / her satisfaction is related to smiling staff faces, proper answer to their question, compassionate medical staff, cooperative front office staff, clean rooms, good foods…extra.
To make staff believe in above,it needs continuous education and awareness . We discuss these issues in grand staff meetings and during staff training programs. And we created good staff involvement in this regard.

I have a daily morning meeting with my steering members, it’s 30-60 minutes meeting. We discuss different points and obstacles, from different points of views, all managers from different departments meet and discuss under my supervision and fight and laugh also. But the conclusion that they discuss about their problems, they get the opinons of other departments managers, they exchange knowledge with other members.
After their meeting, a minutes of meeting is sent to all members with action points and deadlines.
I have a dedicated follow up officer who follow up with the concerned members to make sure they fill their tasks in a timely manner.
Now my steering members, each go to his departments and do the same with his team members ( meetings with them , discussing the problems,and giving them time frame to get find a solution )
So the culture of discussing problems and finding solutions are embedded from top of pyramid till down the level.
I find the role of follow up officer is very important ( one follow up officer ) , he / she follow with the managers, they follow with their supervisors, supervisors follow with their staff…extra.
After a while the culture of taking problems seriously and finding solutions for it is embedded in the Organisation, that even without the follow up officer reminder emails, the problem will be solved in timely manners.
It need a cultural change, we might follow a boring method in the beginning ( like a continuous follow up ). But the change will come after a while.

I agree with above comments about direct association for parking with patient experience and their preferred health destination.
now am managing a 300 beds cur with very nice and big parking plus staff accommodation is 2 minutes walk. So parking availability was always a strength factor and reason for patient satisfaction and a reason for envy from other competitors in town.
Now am opening a new hospital in a close by city, the new hospital is also located in the city center, although it’s smaller in size, but it’s parking is too small, and no staff accommodation close by.
We had lot of discussions last year regarding this point, and parking was a major concern to me to even reconsider the whole hospital start up idea.
Many solutions we came up with and is under process.
1- buying a land across the street from the hospital, to be an area for future parking needs.
2- arranging shuttle bus services for our staff, so they don’t need to bring their cars.
3- the current parking is assigned for patients only, as we don’t want to have it full of staff cars, which what is happening in other hospitals.
4- providing free valet parking services to our patients, so they don’t need to cross the roads.
5- looking for innovative parking ideas like automatic parking solution to fully utilize the space.

Convincing the board about parking importance for second hospital, was not a difficult issue to me, as they know it’s value to our patients and bussiness in general through our first hospital experience.

I strongly believe in the importance of dash boards and the knowledge it provides, I think the start point is a leadership that believes in such tools and how to use it in intelligence and efficient way to improve bussiness outcomes from all sides, wether financially or related to patient safety and quality of health care services.
I have weekly meetings with my medical heads of departments and a monthly meeting with all doctors where I present to them some of the results I get from dashboards related to their departments and the KPI’s we get, and actually they look forward for such presentations and they actively participate in the discussions after wards.
Not all doctors might be a candidates to participate in development process, we ask for volunteers and we keep the door open for any new ideas generated by them, and then we focus on physicians whom we feel their engagement added value to the development process and we choose some of them as memebers in the development committee.
Having a physician as a member in the development will increase the acceptance and engagement of other physicians towards the results generated by such dash boards.