Like almost any organization, in a healthcare network money is mostly made or lost not by the few big things, but the myriad little ones. Those smaller expenses or missed revenue opportunities are just everywhere and they add up astoundingly quickly. Two of my favorite examples of this are actually from the airlines, but they are relevant everywhere. The first is about an airline employee who looked at the food bill (back when they still fed us) and realized that if he reduced the number of olives in the standard airline salad from five to three that the airline would save several million dollars a year.
A similar but darker story is about the actions of an Airline whose pilots felt that they had been badly crossed. After the pilots took a large pay cut to prevent bankruptcy for the airline, the management staff gave themselves huge bonuses as a reward for saving the airline. Incensed, the pilots got “revenge” on the company by flying across the country with their airbrakes on. This almost doubled the fuel costs and forced the airline into bankruptcy after all. I am not sure how this really helped the pilots in the end, but it does go to prove how small actions and the choices of individual people can have a massive impact on any organization.
So how can you keep your hospital flying high? By watching out for the little things like package logging. Yes, package logging. If your hospital is still logging inbound packages by hand with paper and pencil or in an excel spreadsheet, then you are wasting as much effort and money as those pilots with their airbrakes on. Package logging software like EZTrackit helps hospitals “in-bound” packages in four to ten times faster than by hand, with fewer man-hours wasted.
With our new package tracking software android app, you can deliver packages to anywhere in the hospital, whether there is wi-fi there or not, get an electronic signature and record exactly to whom you gave the package. Transitioning from a hand logging system to package tracking software may not result in multi-million dollar gains, but it will pay for itself many times over. This change greatly improves service and satisfaction rates all around. This makes your hospital look as good as the “Olive King of the Air”.
When hospitals lose money they are at risk of “consolidation.” Almost no one wants to be “consolidated” with a larger hospital network that is not their own. The fear of being “right sized” or just to be forced into a new “cultural DNA” is terrifying. Keeping an eye on the big picture often requires that you pay close attention to the little details that add up to make a big difference. Use EZTrackIt’s package tracking software and avoid evil buzzwords like “consolidation.”
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