Continuous Improvement Strategies
How to Manage, Motivate, and Retain Staff

During this era of continuous improvement, healthcare organizations need to be staffed by engaged, motivated, and hard-working frontline employees. As these clinical and non-clinical personnel handle most of the important tasks in any organization and are often the people who directly interact with patients and customers, it's the job of managers to oversee and motivate their staff members. Using Lean management strategies, this easy-to-read book for leaders and managers provides useful, insightful, and innovative information to help managers engage, motivate, and retain their employees during any Lean or other continuous improvement initiative.

Dedication

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Chapter 1: Office-Level Healthcare Leaders: Who They Are and What They Do

Chapter 2: A Brief Synopsis of Key Leadership Ideas

Chapter 3: A Primer on Continuous Improvement, Lean, and Six Sigma in the Healthcare Workplace

Chapter 4: Motivating Employees: Redesigning Organizational-Level Processes to Create a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Chapter 5: In the Trenches: Departmental-Level Strategies for Creating and Maintaining a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Chapter 6: A Guide to Implementing and Monitoring Quality Improvement Initiatives

Chapter 7: How to Make the Right Decisions When One Does Not Have the Time to Plan

Chapter 8: Promoting a Vibrant Office Culture: Suggestions for Healthcare Administrators

Chapter 9: Developing and Enforcing Departmental Rules and Regulations

Chapter 10: A Recap

Index

Anthony Hopper is a healthcare consultant with an MS in Health Systems Administration from Georgetown University. He has worked in the healthcare industry for over ten years in a variety of areas including human resources, accounts receivable, medical collections, compliance, and health policy. He has written numerous articles on healthcare and in other areas, many which have appeared in Yahoo! U.S. News, Yahoo! U.S. Finance and other outlets. Mr. Hopper was part of a research team with the Center for Study Health System Change on a project dealing with variations in healthcare costs. As part of the team he performed some of the statistical modeling for the project and focused mainly on creating profiles on all of the hospital systems located in a targeted Metropolitan Statistical Districts. During Graduate School at Georgetown, he worked with a professor in the School of Nursing and Health Studies to develop methods for disseminating public health information to the school's undergraduate population. In addition to his consulting work, Anthony is also a full-time instructor at ECPI University's Emerywood campus, located in Richmond, Virginia teaching healthcare management courses.