Ask A Question

Express Healthcare‘s interactive FAQ section titled – ‘Ask A Question’ addresses reader queries related to hospital planning and management. Industry expert Tarun Katiyar, Principal Consultant, Hospaccx India Systems, through his sound knowledge and experience, shares his insights and provide practical solutions to questions directed by Express Healthcare readers

Question: What are the evacuation tasks for ICU-based staff?
– Dr Parashar, Allahabad

Answer: A disorganised evacuation can result in confusion, injury, and property damage. While developing your emergency action plan, it is important to determine the following:

• Clinical engineering
• Facilities management
• Hospital volunteers
• Housekeeping
• Pharmacy
• Patient transporters/ escorts [Intra-facility]
• Transport team if available on site [Inter-facility]
• Social work

Question: What are the benefits of forming a patient’s flow team?
– Dr Premprakash, Bhopal

Answer: The importance of creating multidisciplinary teams is to plan quality improvement interventions. One of the benefits of a multidisciplinary team is that members will bring different perspectives and knowledge about problems, their underlying causes, and potential solutions. We recommend that, at a minimum, your team include a team leader (day-to-day leader), senior hospital leader (e.g., the chief quality officer), individuals with technical expertise related to the strategy, ED physicians and nurses, ED support staff (e.g., clerks, registrars), a research/data analyst, and representatives from inpatient units.

Question: How are standard operating procedures important in hospitals?
– Dr Rajni, Ranchi

Answer: Standard operating procedure, if realised and materialised as a component of an effective management system, helps cultivate transparent functions, implement error prevention measures and facilitate corrective actions and transfer knowledge and skill. When it comes to the practice of medicine and pharmaceutical care, its relevance and importance becomes critical to ensure safety. SOP helps to provide an efficient and quality service and having an efficient SOP in place minimises errors, clears the way forward by avoiding uncertainties, and serves as a vital tool to transfer knowledge and skill.

Question: What is the difference between medical marketing and medical practice management?
– Shama, Chennai

Answer: They are related terms, but they have quite different roles in practice. Broadly defined, Medical Practice Management embraces operational matters such as coding, payer selection, accounts receivable, staffing, HIPAA, software, cost cutting, and about a million other issues that are the day-to-day business of the business/ practice. In its purest form, Medical Marketing is about building a positive reputation, getting your phone to ring, getting people to come in for a first appointment and converting them into patients. Practice Management is largely about the wheels that turn inside the practice. And Practice Marketing is the planned process of communications that goes on with individuals who, for the most part, are not yet aware of or part of the practice.

Question: What are the steps for equipment planning in a new hospital?
– Dr Swamini, Bengaluru

Answer: Healthcare technology management professional’s functions are:

• Equipment Control & Asset Management
• Work Order Management
• Data Quality Management
• Personnel Management
• Quality Assurance
• Patient Safety
• Risk management
• Hospital Safety Programmes

Question: What are nurses to patient ratios?
– Kamal, Thane

Answer: Patient ratios are based on matrices developed in accordance with local and national benchmarks for ratios as well as established discipline guidelines.