Archive for February, 2015


What is Needed Now: Transformational Leadership

Filed under: General Management, Healthcare IT — 1 Comment
February 7, 2015

Transformational leadership, as defined by Bernard M. Bass, is leadership based on “stimulation and inspiration of followers to achieve both extraordinary outcomes and develop their own leadership capability” (Bass & Riggio, 2005). This is in contrast to the more traditional transactional leadership model, which relies on an exchange of one thing for another; i.e. hard work for praise and/or compensation. The transformational leader accomplishes inspiration by, “responding to individual followers’ needs by empowering them and by aligning the objectives and goals of the individual followers, the leader, the group, and the larger organization” (Bass & Riggio, 2005). In order to accomplish performance improvement and, ultimately, true innovation, the transformational leader must establish an infrastructure, or foundation, which elevates the strategic capabilities in an organization. This is increasingly relevant in healthcare, where organizations are feeling the pressure of the transformational imperative and must respond to constant change. It’s been my personal experience, and I’m sure there is research to support this, that simply rewarding an individual for their efforts results in moderate outcomes. However, when employees are empowered to make decisions and be an integral part of the change process, there is of a sense of ownership implied and the process improvement is much more rapid and efficient. For those that are versed in transactional leadership, this approach can be difficult to adopt because it is a break from the “my way or the highway” mentality. This is important, particularly in healthcare, where the emphasis now is moving to a more team-based approach driven by metrics.

References

Bass, B. M., & Riggio, R. E. (2005). Transformational leadership. Psychology Press.

Comment

Will Electronic Medical Records Really Help Improve Healthcare Data Collection?

Filed under: Healthcare IT, Project Management — Leave a comment
February 6, 2015

I was recently posed the question as to whether I thought electronic medical records will improve healthcare data collection. As an advocate for technological innovation, I believe that electronic medical records do have the potential to improve data collection. There are some hurdles to overcome, however, in order for that potential to be fully realized. My day-to-day interactions with various healthcare leadership groups have made me aware of the multitude of pressures they face requiring accurate data to make well-informed decisions. Strome states in the book, Healthcare Analytics for Quality and Performance Improvement that, “improving quality in a modern health care organization to the extent and at the pace necessary without the benefit of the information derived from Health Information Technology would be an onerous task” (Strome, 2013, p.7). Electronic medical records can put the information into leaderships’ hands. However, implementation of an EMR is not an end, necessarily, but the means. The roadblocks to effective utilization of these systems, in my opinion, include a health system’s ability to manage the voluminous data collected, to be able to identify and focus on the key data elements necessary for measure, and the ability to share this information across the health care system.

Strome, T. L. (2013). Healthcare analytics for quality and performance improvement. John Wiley & Sons.

Comment