In the Health Service Journal, Steve Black points to research showing that management matters more than money. For instance, he says, the World Management Survey usefully divides management practices into four categories:
- operational (processes, problem solving, continuous improvement);
- performance monitoring;
- target setting; and
- people management (including encouraging teamwork).
Improvements in these management practices led to improvements in performance, which is clearly relevant to an NHS that is labouring under financial constraints, long queues, and flagging productivity.
And by happy coincidence, there is one thing that improves all four categories in one go: better data management.
When data about patient pathways is unified from all relevant IT systems and intuitively presented, then clinicians and managers can more easily improve processes and solve pathway and capacity problems. That ticks the box for operational management.
The same accurate and unified data is needed for balanced performance management and target setting. Tick, and tick.
And teamwork relies on different people playing to their own strengths, on their combined efforts being more than the sum of the parts, and not treading on each other’s toes even if they are working in different locations. That requires unified and up-to-date data that is common to the whole team. Tick.
This is what we do. If you have never experienced the benefits of fully unified, standardised, and automated data, then we need to talk – not only about data, but about all the things you can do with it. Drop us a line.
