Embracing Innovation

Look at your hospital’s processes and patient services and honestly ask yourself, is it time to innovate?

Let’s face it, each hospital has key differences which either make them successful or make them lag behind. 

One of the key differentiators is innovation.

That is, the successful organizations are the ones that are willing to be creative, take calculated risks, do things outside the norm and look beyond their comfort zone in order to serve their patients and drive results.

Some hospitals avoid innovation, because they simply don’t know where to start. Click To Tweet

Here’s a tip, look at your immediate hospital community. Reach out so that you can get ideas, directly from those who interact and engage with your hospital the most. Each community is different and each hospital has its own set of needs, so getting this perspective is an obvious starting point.

What’s innovative in New York City is likely completely different from what’s innovative in a rural community in Georgia. So realize that the word “innovation” has different meanings and simply copying and pasting another hospital’s procedures likely isn’t flexing your creative muscles to their full capacity and is more-or-less a shortcut to innovation.

An example of specific and strategic innovation is a hospital who has a very large parking lot. We’ve seen a real-life instance where this hospital hired someone to drive around in a golf cart to pick up patients and drop them off at specific areas in the hospital. This was a specific need of their community because of the way the hospital was laid out and is an instance of embracing the kind of innovation they actually needed.

Get creative. Look at everything from parking, to food, to telehealth and telerehab.

Chances are, innovative solutions are sitting right under your nose.

What’s one area of your hospital that you’ve improved by embracing innovation?