Highlighted below are three hurdles survey respondents ranked as “very difficult” to overcome.
- Documentation-heavy payment and regulatory systems that take the care team away from the patient (47 percent)
- Fragmented, uncoordinated patient care, including multiple hand-offs, communication barriers and the lack of a nationally integrated healthcare information system (46 percent)
- Governance and senior leadership that are not supportive and set a poor example for staff engagement (45 percent)
“Healthcare is a complex, interconnected system of processes that have been built and layered with additional requirements over time,” said Susan Peiffer, chair-elect of ASQ’s healthcare division and performance improvement specialist for the Western Wisconsin division of the Springfield, Ill.-based Hospital Sisters Health System. “Add complicated patient issues to the mix and one can understand the ongoing quality and service challenges.”
