Changing times Healthcare can be transformed through change management, says Linea CEO Ian Chambers
H
ealth and social care organisations have faced operational challenges for several years as a result of budgetary constraints and a demanding push for continual efficiency gains. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic further amplified these historic issues, resulting in significant caseloads and backlogs, creating workflow challenges and strain within teams. The cessation of elective service provision at the height of the pandemic has meant that in many countries more than 10 per cent of the population are awaiting treatment. Care providers are having to tackle these backlogs while working within budgets that were set three years earlier without the realities of the pandemic in mind, resulting in increased spending and reduced governance.
Similarly, their workforces are often not large enough to cope with these challenges, leading to staff exhaustion and the need for further expenditure resulting from overtime, shift premia and temporary resource.
In-depth activity modelling supported by workforce optimisation can identify the best configuration of services to gain the maximum utility from scarce resources. In addition, these activities can form the foundation of critical incident planning so that business continuity can be assured. Furthermore, seeking different models of care is essential in overcoming the various patient and staff challenges. One such possibility is a greater adoption of community-based care as it provides many
Accelerating recovery Despite all this, by taking the opportunity to re-align services as part of the post COVID renewal programme, recovery can be accelerated. Health economies can create extra capacity (buildings and workforce) in a manner that is least disruptive for service users by separating work into discrete locations, still easily accessible to the local population, but able to act as ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ sites in an emergency, such as a pandemic.
Ian Chambers CEO Linea
“Seeking different models of care is essential in overcoming the various patient and staff challenges”
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03/06/2022 10:19
