Nashville Technology Council

For  those of you on the fence about attending, check out the final agenda with speakers and topics for tomorrow’s 2nd “Naked Hospital” event being held in Jamison Hall at The Factory at Franklin.  The best and the brightest in our healthcare community will be hosting a frank, revealing discussion about transparency and eHealth.

Interested in attending?  We’ll have limited walk ups, so ensure your seat at the event by registering now! If you can’t attend tomorrow, be sure to follow us on Twitter (@nashtechcouncil, hashtag #nakedhospital) for pics and discussion highlights.

Special thanks to our Titan Sponsors HealthSpring and Peak 10 for underwriting tomorrow’s event. We hope to see you there!

Today we are very pleased to have David Jarrard, President and CEO of Nashville Technology Council member company Jarrard Phillips Cate & Hancock, give us a sneak preview on some of the compelling discussion we will be having at our upcoming Naked Hospital event on August 26th at The Factory at Franklin.  We sold out last year, so be sure to register now to reserve your spot!

Facebook is changing the way we run hospitals. Or, it ought to, if we want to keep our best people, provide the best care, and remain, you know, in business.

Here’s a proposition from the world of the obvious: The “new normal” of information transparency has changed the way we live, how we work together, and what we expect from each other.

It’s also changing the way effective leaders lead today.

At the upcoming Naked Hospital conference, I suspect you’ll rightly hear how healthcare “reform” has made attaining information transparency especially urgent to America’s hospitals — even as it strains rusty IT systems and the sanity of CIOs. Quality of care and quality of balance sheets all hinge on success here, and it impacts just about every operational decision.

But while transparency is changing the healthcare industry, it’s also worth considering how transparency is changing us.

An example: In its 2010 Pulse Report, Press Ganey reported on its survey of 235,000 employees at 383 hospitals. Among its findings:

“Gen X employees (born between1965 to 1983) want frequent and real-time conversations and Gen Y (1984 or later) wants to continuously receive real-time information. They both want to be involved in decisions. Gen X employees place more importance on managing themselves while Gen Y employees have high expectations for full participation and collaboration.”

Sound familiar? It’s a short path between the power of social media (where dialogue and transparency and collaboration is king) to the expectations of today’s workforce. Those Gen X and Gen Y employees want a relationship with leadership; they want engagement; they want information and honesty; they even want some measure of control.

The good news: When hospital leadership engages with these employees in this way, the results can be astounding. We’ve seen hospitals transformed by the power of real transparency and honest engagement with their workforce. A comatose workforce can become an army of leaders and advocates. Market share shifts. Satisfaction scores rise. Votes come in.

Wait…they want some control? Yikes. This can be a very scary proposition for hospitals, by nature conservative and skeptical. But the successful “naked hospital” – the ones that truly embrace transparency in every aspect – will tap a powerful resource that can transform their organization.

How powerful? Ask your Facebook friends.

The Nashville Tech Story (8/1/09)

Part III – Personal Responsibility

So far, we have covered costs, quality, and value.  Now, let’s talk about our personal responsibility.

Ok, is it really my fault?  Well yes.  a longitudinal study conducted by the Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care, University of California-Davis, Davis showed that Seniors who were leaner, smoked fewer cigarettes over a lifetime, reduced their smoking, or walked farther had significant subsequent cost savings compared to those with less-healthy lifestyle-related habits.  If you extrapolate the cost savings per person over their life of $1548 X 300mil population.  It is $440 billion over the next 77.7 years (avg. life expectancy) or $5 billion a year.

Medicare could save money and improve health care quality by providing financial incentives to providers for coordinating patient care through a shared savings program, according to a new paper from the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution.

At the end of the day, it is up to everyone involved in healthcare (you, business owners, insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals, physicians, nurses, and clinicians) to work together to innovate the current system.  There is a solution, we just haven’t found it, or agreed to what it is.

Another responsibility that we have is to get engaged with the conversation.

Register today for the Naked Hospital.