“I wish I would have had someone like that when I got started,” says Dr. Greenwald, who tries to fill that role for others now. “Hopefully, each group moves down the path of making sure they have the right stakeholders, the right communications styles and skills in how to look at data and work with front-end staff.”
While Project BOOST focuses teams on reducing readmissions rates, Dr. Kekan has found that the skills learned from Project BOOST have created a blueprint that is applicable to many other team-based challenges in the hospital.
“We describe BOOST as a patient-centric quality initiative that mainly helps improve care transitions and encourages patients to stay informed about their health, which, in turn, helps reduce readmissions,” she says. “BOOST can be used as a framework to enhance other disease-specific discharge initiatives, like CHF [congestive heart failure] and delirium.”
Still, the core elements of reducing readmission rates and making a qualitative impact on her, her team, and the hospital resonate the most with Dr. Kekan.
“Providing a good transition plan to our patients provides satisfaction like none other.”
Brendon Shank is SHM’s associate vice president of communications.
