I read a lot – part of the job. I hear lots of conversations and participate in many in-person and online. Last week, I spent a few evenings with my rehab partner. Between he and my wife, with clients across the country, it was fascinating how the conversation regarding fortune or famine (providers) boiled down to a few simple truths. Summarizing, those that do well have accepted and work doggedly at embracing and living out these axioms. Those that are struggling, simply refuse to grasp these plain truths. Regardless of the entity (SNF, HHA, etc.), these axioms apply (truthfully, for any provider including hospitals).
To preface, I’ve slimmed-down hours upon hours of recent conversations to these five “axioms”. One could argue more apply. Between my partners, my wife (a partner) and me, we have some context here as we work with multiple entities that rank in the top 1,000 post-acute providers in the nation. For example, we all share a working relationship with the 6th ranked SNF in the nation, out of 15,636 SNFs. Unfortunately, we also have client relationships with the lowest ranked providers including one that ranks 15,609. This dichotomy (cruel as it is) gives us a unique perspective regarding truisms (embrace them and succeed, ignore them and fail).
- Quality Matters: This isn’t about hype or verbiage; it’s about results. Organizations that are succeeding are doggedly, persistently and hyper-fixated on their care outcomes. Their culture is deep in quality and they benchmark themselves and what they do, how they perform, with an effort on getting better all the time. Their outcomes demonstrate their quality.
- Staffing Matters: Providers that perform invest in and have in number, great staff perform better. They put the right people closest to the patients. They have assessed their operations and know precisely, what levels of staff by credential and education, their operations require. They train, teach and invest in their “troops”. You won’t find a great SNF that doesn’t have RNs on every shift, every day. You won’t find a great provider, HHA or SNF, etc., that doesn’t have actual employees, not contractors, taking care of patients (primarily).
- Excellence in Management and Leadership is Imperative: The best have long-term, highly qualified management and leadership at every level in the organization. They retain great talent and grow it like a prized rose-bush (ever watch rose “aficionados” you’ll get the reference). These folks aren’t the highest paid or even with the most credentials; they are excellent directors of task and people. The most credentialed (education, certifications, etc.) don’t correlate to the best manager or leader. In a nutshell: Excellence here means bright, strategic, engaged, earnest, industry and trade experts, that are quality driven.
- The Devil is in the Details: The best providers are not just current with policy issues and reimbursement trends, they are ahead and know the implications and manage to these details. For example, they know length-of-stay matters and they are working to shorten each encounter to only the resources required (days, visits, etc.). Their quality measures are excellent because they review the dozens of measurable data points to look for trends and to track outcomes. They have protocols and disease pathways in-place. They adopted antibiotic stewardship practices before the buzzword existed. They already were on pain and the management thereof, without or minimizing opioids, before alarms sounded. They had steps in place to quality review care transitions and hospitalizations. QAPI was something new but not to them. Doing things right was and still is, the driver for these excellent organizations.
- The Organization is like a Car: This is meant to be a silly reference but also serious. Driving is all about what is going on ahead of you and being anticipatory and prepared. The rearview mirror is checked but only briefly. Failure to pay attention to the road ahead and anticipate hazards, keep safe distances, etc. is how one arrives at a destination, safely and efficiently. Think of it this way: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast (an old and time-honored, Special Forces reference). Great providers embrace this philosophy – do things slowly, smoothly to be able to respond quickly when necessary. What differentiates the very best providers from the very worst is their focus on FORWARD – being very anticipatory and developing core, innate competencies that help be “smooth and fast” as adaptation is required in health care.
Food for thought. If one chooses to use the above points on a comparative basis, my guess is you will find what I know. The best embrace these axioms. The worst don’t or don’t consistently. Everyone else in the middle has a choice to make – get better or get worse. The truth about “great’ in health care is easy to understand.