Focus on Service Excellence:
For those of us working in the Behavioral Health Care industry the careful use of words matters a lot more than we may think. With the changes anticipated in the Affordable Care Act, top management will have to reconsider how to re-engineer their institutions into outstanding performers, re-focus on service excellence, attaining national accreditation and implementing realistic, achievable rational strategic plans for the future.
Within this changing environment now in motion, building real relationships between consumers and program outcomes will require more and different performance outcome measures. While outcome measures are not any less important; the communication tools being employed are becoming increasingly important.
That said there is a national movement by government forces, particularly the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services to move from subjective measurement of performance outcomes to measure performance based indicators directly tied to payment for services.
Integrating these new performance standards into daily operations will become one the biggest challenges facing both addiction treatment and mental health providers. We need to find newer more innovative ways, cost effective ways to collaborate with each other in order to solve industry wide performance problems rather than considering only our own individual sector needs. The challenge is really at the operating levels of the organization, and definitely not with the corporate legal eagles or even with the ever knowledgeable bean counters.
Several questions frame this debate:
- Do our middle managers have the skill sets to implement other forms of communication tools within the facility?
- Do we have a way to assess the relative importance of the communication opportunities available to us?
- Are their ways to integrate new performance indicator findings into improved treatment protocols within the facility?
- Have we fully informed our clients how they can receive and correctly interpret our performance reporting information?
Really, we should view this is an exciting and important time for rigorous adoption of new information and systems of operating which will improve the delivery of behavioral health treatment services. The only way programs will lose this battle with changing the status quo is by halting the process of learning and adapting to an ever shifting environment.
ACG Can Help You:
The Addictions Consulting Group (ACG): is where small to medium behavioral health organizations can turn when they need swift, affordable assistance with complex problems. Here, you’ll find people on the leading edge of electronic technology. ACG represents all the elements organizations need to succeed – management support, national accreditation expertise, strategic planning, and expertise in building revenue growth into their behavioral health operations. Talk to us and proceed with optimism.
