Engaging Your Spokes Leads to Stability
By Karl Straub
Hospital command centers have become an essential innovation for hospital operations. They offer practical benefits in the form of operational efficiency and data visibility and give a real-time view of everything happening in the hospital in one central location. However, a command center is not the only factor to maximize your organization's potential.
While a centralized view gives a critical advantage to those who are guiding operations in the command center, it is also important to engage the care team members who are serving on the front lines. Front-line engagement is essential for maximizing the effectiveness of a command center, and a combination of a strong hub and spokes is necessary for success.
Think of it like a bike wheel. The command center functions like the hub of the wheel, providing a key structural center that helps steer. In order to keep the wheel on the path and stable, you need strong spokes to maintain stability and keep your organization rolling toward success.
In your hospital, nursing units, MRI, radiology, rehab, diagnostic areas, and the ED all function as examples of spokes.
Let's look at the relationship between a command center and a nursing unit. The command center is a centralized support area that partners with the unit to give a high-level view of the organization, and works to balance patient placement and staffing across the hospital as well as on the unit. Functioning as a spoke, the nursing unit provides their expertise to the command center, or hub, and maintains its primary focus on patient care through a collaborative relationship with the hub.
Through a strong bi-directional channel, your nursing units should have a real-time and reliable communication channel to provide feedback to the hub on the status of the patients, beds, and staff on the unit. Which patients do we anticipate will be discharged today? Is there a barrier to transferring a patient from ICU to step down? What extenuating circumstances are affecting the unit that the hub couldn't possibly be aware of? Sharing this information can be the difference between a timely, safe placement of a patient on a unit and a placement wrought with delays and a poor patient experience. As teammates, both the hub and spokes collaborate to avoid delays and roadblocks and to keep patient flow smooth and efficient.
On a wheel, if the connection between the hub and spoke is strong, the wheel remains stable. The same thing can be said about your hospital: if the command center functions as a bi-directional information channel rather than a one-way path for giving orders, your connection to your spokes will be strong, and your command center is likely to accomplish its purpose.
In order to maximize the potential of your hospital command center, make sure you have strong and effective spokes.