The Ins and Outs of the End-to-End – Part 1 of 5

By | Posted on: December 28, 2011

Over the next few weeks I’ll dissect our end-to-end philosophy of labor management.

There are five steps as illustrated below:

I’ll break down each step and share the importance to your organization, your staff, and your patients. The proprietary labor management strategies that make up these steps are pretty complex and have been developed, refined, and perfected over more than a decade of research and practice. That being said, the fundamental ideas behind the strategies are relatively simple to explain.

Step 1: Plan.

This is where it all starts. Whether you are talking about an inpatient nursing unit or an ancillary unit, the quality of the policies, procedures and plans you develop and implement will have the greatest impact on the following steps.

We often liken this to the base in the house of cards. Build a base that can’t support your organization and guess what happens when you add the next layer… If your organization doesn’t crumble, it’ll be overcome with inefficiencies as you and your staff scramble to keep it from toppling.

This maybe isn’t the most exciting phase of the end-to-end philosophy, but it is certainly the most important and rewarding phase when you do it right and stick to it.

Everything rests upon your plan. We help our clients determine where they are, where they want to be, and what changes they are going to have to make to get there. It’s a growing process that can be uncomfortable.

Breaking old habits is perhaps the most difficult thing for people to achieve.

Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit.”

What does that mean to you? It means that your organization can make positive changes, and by sticking to them, you can become the organization that you, your staff, and your patients deserve.