Take this vision statement, as an example: “All people always experience the safest, highest-quality, best-value healthcare across all settings.”
Sounds like the kind of healthcare I want for my kids and my mom. That is the vision statement of the Joint Commission.
How about this vision statement: “CMS is a major force and a trustworthy partner for the continual improvement of health and healthcare for all Americans.”
Not too shabby.
So why do we view regulators like moles? Why do we arm ourselves with big, black mallets ready to strike when we see them emerge from the corner of our eye?
HM-Mole Alliance
Whac-a-Mole is an unwinnable game. No player has ever whacked all the moles. If you have not been to your local arcade lately, the game starts out slow, such that most players can keep pace; it then accelerates, such that several moles are outside the holes simultaneously, and their time above ground becomes consecutively shorter. You can add mallets, even add players, but generally they end up getting in each other’s way, communication breaks down, and one mole gets whacked twice, while another exits unscathed, only to break the soil elsewhere.
Danielle Scheurer, MD, MSCR, SFHM
“Whac-a-mole”
Maybe a better strategy is to have a strategy—to work with our “trustworthy partners” to align our vision statements, anticipate the vermin’s approach, and fill the holes (or chasms) before anything has a chance to squeeze through. Maybe we should tell them where the moles are, because we actually already know what they look like and where they dwell. Why don’t we tell them which moles are the most dangerous, the most annoying, or are the most likely to tear up the topsoil into an irreparable state?
What about all the issues that no one is telling us we have to comply with—for example, a universal allergy list across the spectrum of care, or a perfectly reliable system to ensure that a patient with an epidural catheter cannot be anticoagulated? Such a list is endless, and no one is telling us we have to address the majority of the items on the list.
It comes down to this: What kind of healthcare do you want for yourself, your family, and the patients who trust you? I’d rather not have a reactive, frantic race to obliterate the next torrid creature that has arisen. I suggest a proactive, strategic pathway of tilling the soil.
In anticipation of a universal vote for the latter, join me in congratulating the healthcare industry in holding ourselves accountable, embracing a new era of transparency and collaboration, and routinely going beyond the expectations of our regulators. And leaving the mallet in the arcade.
Dr. Scheurer is a hospitalist and chief quality officer at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. She is physician editor of The Hospitalist. Email her at [email protected].