Wee Joo

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Breaking Down Departmental Lines to Form Disease Specific Centers
Wee Joo
Posted on April 28, 2017 at 5:30 pm
How to transition from a traditional departmental based organisation into one which is disease / cancer region based with each tumor group / center comprised of a range of specialty e.g. surgery, medical oncology, Radiation oncology, specialised advance practice nurse, [...]

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On May 12, 2017, Wee Joo commented on How to handle an old department head who was replaced because of malfunctioning but is still around :

This is often difficult and we all have to face similar personalities in our organisation. If the individual is vocal and opinionated but at least not disruptive to the department’s plan. I find the following useful in my experience

1) The HOD should talk to AB when she returns and engage her id Dept plans and set expectations on behaviour from senior members of department
2) Narrow her work scope to focus on areas where she is strong and will be an asset
3) for important decision, engage the department as a whole where AB influence may be diluted by the collective and decision made by majority vote
4) As mentioned by others, she may not be a suitable head and may be relief not to be one so the situation may not be bad
5) If she does turn out to be disruptive and undermines the new head, then it will be a decision of the institution whether she is so valuable that she has to be kept on. Again as mention by others, no one is indispensible

On May 11, 2017, Wee Joo commented on The digital revolution of health care – how to change the role of doctors :

Technology needs to improve workflow, work efficiency, reduce error, improve safety and patient/physician experience. Sadly most technology used in hospital have not been able to do that. Hospital IT and EMR are very expensive, and often not developed or implemented to solve these issues holistically. My personal suspicion in that the IT specialist and people in the hospital who end up using these systems are not always speaking the same language and the users are not always appropriately engaged or consulted during development phase. And when implemented, the systems are too inflexible or too expansive to make tweaks and adjustments.

On May 11, 2017, Wee Joo commented on How do we measure performance when we move from disease specific/age specific units to an integrated unit that is primarily geographical based. :

This is quite challenging as we face the same issue in reorganising our cancer center. You have to get the buy-in of existing HODs whose staff will come under the new integrated practice units and then re-align KPIs for the new unit, i.e. for the HODs to accept that for a particular staff, KPI and performace will be assessed based on those define for the new IPU and not merely those for the departments. This requires engagement and realignment of objectives and cannot be simply force through using a top down approach

On May 10, 2017, Wee Joo commented on Engaging Physicians in Dashboards development. :

I think data is very useful not just to drive performance but also to reduce waste and as a platform for continuous improvement. However, a few elements needs to be in place for its success

1) Deep engagement with users at all levels to make sure what is collected and available would be useful
2) Data source must be accurate
3) Data must be up to date and ‘live’ if possible
4) Utility and usefulness of the data should be shared with institution from different users to further enhance user adoption
5) The business case would be if the use the dashboard lead to improvement in performance, and reduction in waste, so these needs to be quantified and tracked (these KPI should in fact be key data collected and reflected in the dashboard), so that one can know if the investment is useful as setting up the dashboard and data collection do need a lot of investments and resources

On May 10, 2017, Wee Joo commented on Patient Experience :

I think the balance is really important as there appear to be tension in the 3 components but also opportunities if one can find ways to handle the 3 separately. If one is truly patient centric, then it is important to see it from the patient journal. If the patient journal is optimal, I find this usually also means a efficient operations, so the 2 can go hand in hand. The physical environment is important. This element may mean some investment but often what is important may not be expensive to provide e.g. vending machine for drinks, quiet environemnt, wi-fi access, comfortable chair, etc. One thing we realized too in our patient focus group meeting is that communications and expectation setting is very important. If they patient is given the right expectation and is kept informed and have things explained clearly and have things to occupy their times and is managed by friendly staff, they will have a good experience. To deliver this, the staff are important and need to have the right temperament, personalities and motivation to deliver this and if delivering great patient experience is important for the organisation, then this needs to a key component in staff recruitment. If you have the right people, then the buy-in will be easier.