North Carolina regulators have approved Carolinas Medical Center-NorthEast's plan for a $17.2 million, 24-hour emergency department in Kannapolis. The center will house 10 treatment bays, two observation beds, imaging equipment such as X-ray and ultrasound machines, a lab and pharmacy operations. CMC rival Novant is also seeking approval from the state Certificate of Need Section to build a $107 million, 50-bed hospital in the town.
A medical facility in West Maui, HI, has received approval from Maui County officials that could jump-start the project's development. The West Maui Improvement Foundation is working with Texas-based Southwest Health Group to develop a 25-bed critical care hospital, a 40-bed skilled nursing facility and a medical office building. The project has been in the works for nine years and it is expected to cost approximately $40 million.
A bill being proposed in the Washington state Senate would prevent prescription drug companies from "data mining" physicians' records--a process by which pharmaceutical companies buy prescription information from pharmacies to cross-check against a list of doctors' prescription ID numbers. The bill initially had widespread Senate support, but it passed by a narrow margin after concerns about limits it would place on the spread of AIDS-prevention drug information. Some say legislators thought the bill was overly aggressive because doctors already have the option of opting out of data collection.
A San Francisco transplant surgeon accused of hastening the death of a prospective organ donor acted properly when he ordered sizable doses of medication for the man, the physician's attorney suggested in court. Hootan Roozrokh, MD, is charged with dependent adult abuse, administering a harmful substance and prescribing controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose. The criminal proceeding is the first of its kind in the United States against a transplant surgeon.
A new public-private partnership in Washington, DC, will target some of the worst health problems affecting th city's youth. The Child Health Action Plan sets targets for reducing the incidence of these diseases and conditions such as asthma and obesity by 2012 or earlier.
My recent article on the overuse of handheld devices initiated a number of heated responses. Readers had strong opinions on the use of PDAs in meetings, but they had even stronger opinions on meetings themselves. As one reader wrote, "It's not the PDA's fault if a meeting does not hold everyone's information; it's the meeting's fault."
Meetings and their usefulness, or lack there of, are a hot topic in any workplace. I've avoided the topic here because I wasn't sure I wanted to jump on the "Death by Meetings" bandwagon. Even more, I wasn't sure I wanted to admit that there's a little part of me that actually likes meetings.
Before you call me crazy, let me explain. Every day, I'm dragged into at least one 4-hour, 475-e-mail exchange about a topic that involves a group of people with vastly different opinions. These e-mails usually involve some degree of translation and spell-checking, and inevitably, someone hits "reply" instead of "reply all," omitting the rest of the stakeholders. During these interchanges, I can't help but think, "Can't we just have a 15-minute meeting about this!?"
The problem with meetings, I think, is that they rarely occur when someone says, "Can't we just have a 15-minute meeting?!" For a lot of people, scheduling meetings is a way to deal with stress at work. These folks send meeting invites like emotional eaters devour potato chips. As a result, meetings usually happen when they're not needed, and they don't occur when they should.
Meetings involve forethought and planning, but most meeting organizers think preparation means hitting "Send" on a meeting invite. That's probably why disorganized, rambling meetings top the list of workers' meeting frustrations, according to a 2007 poll by Opinion Research USA.
Healthcare's just like any other industry when it comes to meeting misuse and abuse. But as a healthcare leader, you have an added challenge: How do you bring together your organization's stakeholders without interrupting patient care? Executive staff may plan to attend meetings, but, for most physicians and nurses, every meeting-filled hour is an hour away from patients. So, how do you ensure that your meetings are effective?
My colleague Corey Christman wrote about St. Vincent in this month's issue of HealthLeaders magazine. To ensure proper preparation takes place, every meeting in the three-hospital system must be preceded by an e-mailed agenda, complete with proposed outcomes for the time spent. This helps ensure that the meeting runs efficiently and follow-up actions occur. The unexpected result of these rules, says president and CEO Peter Banko, is that meetings are more likely to start on time when every minute is accounted for.
Banko also had his executive team flush its calendars of any recurring meeting that no longer addresses its "original purpose." Who doesn't have an overload of unnecessary recurring meetings that could use cleaning up?
There's no question that meetings are essential to doing business. They bring together decision-makers, facilitate brainstorming, and save you from long, frustrating e-mail strings. The trick, however, is that both the invite and the actual meeting be well thought-out, useful, and informative. They should involve action, not just updates, and, where possible, they should involve only the key players. Although the root of healthcare is life and death, every meeting is not.
Molly Rowe is leadership editor with HealthLeaders magazine. She can be reached at mrowe@healthleadersmedia.com.