Author Archive for Stefani Daniels
Stefani Daniels is President and Managing Partner of Phoenix Medical Management Inc. , a national advisory firm exclusively devoted to hospital case management strategic planning, program improvement projects, and education. Ms. Daniels spent the majority of her career in the executive suite of hospitals in New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida and is a former senior consultant with Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems, Inc. She held adjunct faculty appointments in graduate healthcare programs at Columbia University in NY, University of Pennsylvania, and Nova Southeastern University School of Business and Entrepreneurship in Fort Lauderdale, FL. She served as the acute-care SIG facilitator for CMSA and currently sits on the editorial board of Lippincott’s Professional Case Management journal. Stefani is a former member of the CMAC Credentialing Advisory Board and is a popular speaker, proliferate author, and recognized expert in the field of hospital case management. She is co-author of the only text devoted exclusively to hospital case management, The Leader’s Guide to Hospital Case Management, and is a contributing author in the recently published 2nd edition of CMSA Core Curriculum for Case Management. Stefani can be reached at daniels@phoenixmed.net.
Whiteboards help communicate across departments
Placing whiteboards at the foot of the patient’s bed was innovated by Planetree, a not-for-profit organization that works with hospitals to improve the patient experience and it has spread across the country. Unfortunately, in most hospitals whiteboards stand blank except for some flower doodling. That’s a shame because whiteboards are a fantastic way for departments to talk to one another and the patient about the plan of care in a simple, direct, way.
The intent of whiteboards is much more than simply identifying discharge dates and times. The whiteboard is meant as a means of communicating the plan for the patient’s day—what tests, what new procedures, and medications the patient can expect on a given day. Just think, different caregivers can walk into a patient’s room and in a glance see what the attending physician has prescribed for the day. For the patient’s benefit, information written on the whiteboard should be in layman’s language. Patients don’t know what NPO stands for.
Using the whiteboard as a means to inform everyone of the patient’s targeted discharge is example of making sure everyone is on the same page regarding progression of care plans for the patient. According to nurses and case managers I have spoken with, the feedback from patient families is consistently positive.
However physicians are not always excited about whiteboards. In one client hospital, physicians were annoyed and complained to the CEO when staff members started using whiteboards to write patients’ plan for the day and targeted discharge. He was seriously thinking of putting a stop to their use, but the physicians’ complaints were quickly over-taken by the number of complements he received from patients, families, and hospital caregivers. Even dietary and housekeeping staff members endorsed the practice. So, the CEO told the grumbling physicians to learn to deal with it….they are staying.
Does you facility use whiteboards? If so please share the ways you use them to communicate and how you handle HIPAA concerns.
