5 Keys to a Greener Supply Chain

We've all heard the "Three R’s" (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) that help to maximize efficiency and eliminate waste from our routine. Hospital leaders may think going green is costly, yet there are several ways to improve sustainability while maintaining profitability. In honor of Earth Day, here are five ideas that can turn ordinary, everyday practices into areas of opportunity.

1.       Cut back emissions through vendor consolidation.

Using a prime vendor to consolidate supply orders into large bulk deliveries reduces your number of deliveries in any given week. Many of these vendors participate in the Environmental Protection Agency's SmartWay Transport Partnership program, which creates incentives for freight companies to improve supply chain fuel efficiency.

2.       Reduce paper use through electronic ordering.

The average hospital produces close to three tons of waste per day and upwards of 80 percent of this is non-hazardous, mostly paper product. Maximizing your use of electronic data interchange systems for vendor transactions will reduce paper. EDI also increases efficiency and lowers administrative costs, so pay close attention to which of your vendors require paper ordering.

3.       Choose green products.

Manufacturers are increasingly producing more natural medical goods that are cost-savers or cost-neutral and providers are responding. Kaiser Permanente recently announced that it is replacing its current IV solution bags and tubing with materials that are free of two chemicals shown to be potentially harmful to humans and the environment. In addition to being green, this decision will save the company an estimated $5 million per year. Draft an environmental purchasing policy for your organization that incorporates a switch to greener products and practices.

4.       Increase your energy awareness. According to the EPA's ENERGY STAR® program:

• Every $1 a non-profit healthcare organization saves on energy is equivalent to $20 in new hospital revenue

• Every five percent energy cost reduction for for-profit hospitals can increase earnings per share by one cent.

Hospital operations are energy-intensive, so incorporating simple steps to reduce energy consumption can add up to long-term savings. Low-cost supply purchasing ideas — such as buying energy efficient light bulbs or installing motion sensors in rooms that are used with less frequency — are available on the EPA's website.

5.       Eliminate cardboard.

Corrugated cardboard represents a large portion of the solid waste that gets discarded by hospitals each year. It takes up valuable storage space and significantly increases waste disposal costs for providers due to its bulkiness. Yet it is one of the easiest materials to recycle. Many vendors offer recycling programs such as one in Los Angeles, where a distributor collects cardboard from participating hospitals at no extra cost. Also consider switching to smaller just-in-time or low-unit-of-measure orders that allow for a variety of supplies to be delivered together in one reusable tote ready for immediate use. This can vastly reduce cardboard usage.

Most vendors are able to identify green product alternatives and distributors have programs to help you choose such products and adopt greener processes. Ask your medical products supplier what they are doing to lessen their organization's environmental footprint. Through active dialogue, you may find that your efforts quickly catch on and become a permanent fixture at your organization.

5 reasons why nursing isn’t really such a bad job after all

Sure, nursing’s tough, but there are some (considerable) perks you may not have considered. There’s always a silver lining somewhere!

1. The uniforms have gotten considerably better over the last 100 years.

Seriously…would you rather be wearing a cornette headdress? How about one of those lace-trimmed caps with the ribbons? And don’t get me started on the pinafores and wool capes. (Though, to be honest, the capes were kind of cool.)

2. The hours are great.

No, really. If you have a typical floor job or a job in a clinic, you can leave your work behind you when you head home. Your mileage may vary if you’re in administration, but generally, once you close the door to the hospital, that’s it. Aside from getting your however-many hours of continuing education every year, you can think about other stuff when you’re at home. Contrast that with people with jobs in brokerages, who are tied to their BlackBerries.

3. The pay? Not to be sneezed at.

Again, mileage may vary, but we’re talking about a job that, in most places, pays both weekend and evening/overnight differentials, as well as extra on holidays. We may not make as much as plumbers, true, but we make more than electrical engineers.

4. Hospital food is a guaranteed weight-control mechanism.

Try not bringing your lunch for two weeks and see what happens. My bet is that, when faced with the Green Glop du Jour with a side of Orange Cheezy Ooze, you’ll lose 10 pounds. In normal office jobs, they tie you to your seat with those little donuts out of the vending machine. If you do well, they’ll promote you to brownies. Your butt gets huge.

5. We’re not used-car salesmen.

We may be mistaken at times for handmaidens, helpmeets, walking medical encyclopedias or people-not-smart-enough-to-be-doctors, but almost nobody thinks we’re on the take. Nursing is on the list of most trusted professions year in and year out. It’s kind of nice to be trusted, and to be doing something that everybody has had some encounter with over a lifetime. Nurses are rarely implicated in coup d’état or the violent overthrow of corporations, which gives you an automatic alibi if you decide to depose the leader of some small country. “Who, me? But I’m a nurse!”

Courtesy: scrubsmag

Medical device supply chain conferences are highly effective in addressing issues related to supply chain strategies.

Nowadays, the medical industry is cleaning itself up by streamlining their operations. The cost of maintaining and improving medical services has become so expensive. Manufacturers are also struggling to make products more cost effective and reliable, ensuring ROI on behalf of the clients. As such, it is an important thing to understand medical device supply chain. Movers and shakers in the industry understand that effective management of the medical device supply chain has a big impact on their future as providers of quality devices and medical products. Thus, conferences and conventions are created specially to address of this massive market.

Peer to peer analysis

Medical device supply chain conferences are ideal in order for industry professionals to meet and understand strategies, methods and practices that are prevailing or just emerging trends in the supply chain. Different companies tend to develop their own practices and so there is very little focus on industry standardization. This affects the medical device distributors and medical facilities in which they have to suffer and complicate their processes that could cost money and less customer interaction. By understanding how the industry players handle their processes, it becomes more apparent their own weaknesses and strengths.

Improving visibility in medical device supply chain

Visibility is not just a matter of expanding presence in the market. It is also about ensuring that the work process is designed to improve medical device supply chain, show transparency about their processes and innovations and striking a balance between the needs of the companies themselves, the medical device distributors and the patients themselves who are using the innovations. By improving the transparency between various units of the supply chain can greatly improve the flow of information.

Finding solutions

Conferences about the medical device supply chain can help generate solutions for pressing issues about the industry. There are many potholes right now in medical device supply chain and this need to be addressed in order to maximize the services and quality of results of all participants. Such conferences normally include panel discussions, case studies, and others. This helps in understanding more the current conditions in the market, what the businesses are doing and how the industry is being affected by it.

Resolving industry questions

Aside from individual issues and concerns about medical device supply chain, conferences help in finding answers to common issues and limitations experienced in the industry. Such issues include the focus on innovation and performance without taking note of general costs and expenses that could affect the healthcare industry or limit the number of users of such innovations. There is also the issue of ensuring competitiveness. In the last few years, we have seen that most companies are putting more focus on ROI and the bottom line something that could lead to even higher cost for the other important units of the supply chain, such as the medical device distributors and hospitals.

By participating in conferences, players in the medical industry will gain understanding and be able to find solutions about current problems, discrepancies and limitations of their supply chain strategies.

Establishing standards for medical device distributors and manufacturers is necessary to uphold best practices for a more effective management of the medical device supply chain. 

When clinical, operational twain meets

Specialized function can integrate with function of specialists

When two persons perform the same or similar functions in two different areas or departments, process efficiency experts recruited by hospital administration logically call for standardization and perhaps a merger.

For many healthcare organizations, pharmacy and supply chain operations largely claim exception and immunity to the suggestion.

Arguably, either department can learn a great deal from the other. Pharmacy taps into the clinical realm more deeply and typically gains more acceptance by doctors and surgeons. In addition, pharmacy has a reputation for inventory management expertise, aided in part by formularies, P & T committees, drug data standardization and facilitated by direct supplier involvement in data management.

Meanwhile, supply chain oversees a breadth of product that far surpasses pharmacy’s, even though pharmacy may represent the larger dollar volume of annual purchases. Supply chain has developing ties with clinicians and the C-suite with direct links to an organization’s operating budget. In short, pharmacy may be responsible for one area, but supply chain reaches everywhere else, earning a prominent spot on CEO and CFO radar screens.

More than a few healthcare organizations recognize the value that a symbiotic relationship between pharmacy and supply chain can generate. In fact, a number of hospitals and healthcare systems have merged the two areas so that both operate under a single leader – either from pharmacy or supply chain.

Three Ways to Reduce Stress

Headaches, back pain, upset stomach, loss of sleep. The implications of increased stress can affect all aspects of a person’s life, having an especially harsh impact on that individual’s work life. Performing your job at the highest level and tending to responsibilities is particularly important for those of us in the medical profession – when patients’ health and livelihood are at stake.

Stress in the workplace is going to happen, but the best way to lessen the blow is by discovering better ways to cope with it and ultimately reduce it.

Three ways to help reduce your stress and anxiety as a caregiver.

Breathing Exercises

A quick and easy way to lower your stress level. Just a minute or two of heavy, deep breathing can do wonders for your stress level – helping oxygenate the blood, wake up the brain and relax your muscles. What makes breathing exercises so advantageous in helping eliminate stress is that they can be done almost anywhere.

Exercise

From biking to dancing to even gardening, exercise and physical activity are fantastic stress relievers. As your physical activity increases, your brain creates additional feel-good neurotransmitters, called endorphins. Endorphins interact with the opiate receptors in the brain to help reduce the body’s perception of pain – resulting in a decrease in the negative effects caused by stress. In addition to the physical advantages from the increased endorphins, exercise gives you an outlet for your frustrations and helps distract you from the areas of your life that may be causing stress.

Music Therapy

Did you know that music therapy is being used in hospitals all across the country for everything from alleviating pain to promoting movement for physical rehabilitation to helping elevate patients’ moods? Aside from its applications around medical offices, music therapy has been proven to lessen muscle tension and promote relaxation for just about anybody. Yes, that means you, caregivers. Overcome with anxiety while on the job? Pop in your headphones and listen to a few songs on a soothing playlist and feel the effects – slower breathing, reduced heart rate and an activation of the relaxation response (the counterpart to the fight-or-flight).

In conclusion, anxiety and stress on the job are commonplace, especially given the hefty responsibilities of a medical professional. Hopefully with the tips from this post you’ll become a little better equipped to handle any mental strain coming from your duties as a caregiver.

10 Tips for Nurse Practitioners to Avoid Burnout

How can taking care of one's self have anything to do with business? As a business owner, you work hard; most likely you work harder than you ever did as an employed person. This is especially true during your first years in business. As such, it's important to take the time to recharge your batteries. Here are some suggestions for you:

1. Vacation. There is no question, getting away is the best way to recharge. While many of us may not be able to get away for 2-3 weeks, consider several mini-vacations or even a staycation.

2. Read a book that has nothing to do with medicine, nursing, health or business. Totally get away from your everyday work and immerse yourself in something completely unrelated.

3. Consider taking an afternoon to go to the movies, visit a gallery, or meet your friends for coffee and conversation.

4. Take up a new hobby this summer. Perhaps you've wanted to learn to paint, play an instrument, or kayak.

5. Visit the many Summer Art Fairs and Festivals.

6. Have a picnic under the stars. August is great month for Meteor showers.

7. Like to camp, but short on time? Consider camping in your backyard.

8. Take a morning off and go for an early morning hike. It's a great time to watch the wildlife and can feel decadent while you sip your morning coffee/tea and others are scurrying off to work.

9. Is there something you do just for special occasions? Great! Make yourself the special occasion and treat yourself.

10. Attend some summer CE opportunities in a new location. While work related, it still gets you out of the office and a chance to network with others while allowing time for sightseeing.

What Does it Take to Be a Hospital CFO Today?

For many hospital CFOs today, the healthcare financial environment might feel like Wheel of Fortune. Stiff competition requires their organizations to be at the top of their game; there are numerous different components needed to solve their daily puzzles; and if things go awry, "bankruptcy" could be only a spin away.

1. Take board meetings seriously

2. Stay connected to the community

3.  Make capital planning a big priority

4. Be diligent in payor negotiations

5. Work closely with physicians and clinicians by breaking out of silos

6. Be flexible, and support the hospital's overall mission

5 things CFOs need to communicate to CIOs to prevent overspending

The current healthcare landscape is calling for more collaboration, and possibly the most important partnership is that of the CIO and CFO. With new IT becoming a pressing necessity, it's crucial both professionals understand the ins and outs of IT spending.

1. Gain internal alignment. The number one thing CFOs should communicate to CIOs is the importance of gaining internal alignment of the blocking and tackling - having good budgeting processes in place and good relationships with their internal clients or users, like doctors and nurses who need services from IT." Healthcare organizations have become better at getting everyone on the same page but understanding departmental needs will help to create a true budget forecast cycle so you have some visibility into what those needs are and what they may cost.

2. Benchmark your spending. It's becoming much more common place to benchmark spending.

3. Don't get stuck in 'vendor lock.

4. Question your maintenance charges.

5. Stay on top of going rates for outside services.

7 Tips to Ensure Nurses a Good Night’s Sleep (Part 2)

One of the greatest challenges that every nurse faces at one point in their career is lack of sleep. Working as a nurse, we are sometimes put on various shifts. We are asked to swing back and forth between days and nights. We get brought in for on-calls, which could be a random night shift mixed into a run of 12 hour days.

Not only does the professional staffing model of nursing create sleep disturbances, but own experiences as a nurse often adds fuel to the fire.

Nurses take care of difficult patients, observe death and pathology. Nurses work with challenging personalities. No wonder they have a lot on their minds!  But sleeping, or not sleeping, in this way can lead to terrible problems.  Mistakes can be made at work if concentration is poor or  minds are foggy. Moods can swing as we feel irritable, exhausted, and overwhelmed.  Illness can exacerbate as inadequate rest can lead to depression, weight gain, and decreased immune function.

So what do Nurses do with all of this? How can they ensure to receive proper rest? Well, there are a few things.

4. Do not eat or drink too close to bedtime.

5. Get activity and movement in each day. If you don’t do anything physical during the day that gets your heart rate pumping, your body isn’t really going to be tired or need any rest. It didn’t do anything! So get outside and get moving.  Fresh air is a great way to charge up during the day so that you can rest well during the night!

6. Try aromatherapy or oils.

7. Create an environment conducive for sleep.  Keep a dark, cool room.  The worst thing is to wake up seating and hot.  Turn down the lights to prepare for peaceful relaxation and quiet time.

7 Tips to Ensure Nurses a Good Night’s Sleep (Part 1)

One of the greatest challenges that every nurse faces at one point in their career is lack of sleep. Working as a nurse, we are sometimes put on various shifts. We are asked to swing back and forth between days and nights. We get brought in for on-calls, which could be a random night shift mixed into a run of 12 hour days.

Not only does the professional staffing model of nursing create sleep disturbances, but own experiences as a nurse often adds fuel to the fire.

Nurses take care of difficult patients, observe death and pathology. Nurses work with challenging personalities. No wonder they have a lot on their minds!  But sleeping, or not sleeping, in this way can lead to terrible problems.  Mistakes can be made at work if concentration is poor or  minds are foggy. Moods can swing as we feel irritable, exhausted, and overwhelmed.  Illness can exacerbate as inadequate rest can lead to depression, weight gain, and decreased immune function.

So what do Nurses do with all of this? How can they ensure to receive proper rest? Well, there are a few things.

1. If you can, try to get on a schedule. I know with shift work sometimes this is impossible. But the more you can get onto a schedule of bedtime at 10 pm and waking up at 6 am each day, the easier it will be for you to quickly drift off.

2. Keep your bed and your room just for sleeping. Do not lie in bed while on the computer.  Do not watch TV and try to “fall asleep.”  Read in a comfortable chair before bed, but not in the bed itself.  You have to train your body to know that when you get into the bed, it is time for rest. 

3. Journal in the evening. It’s helpful to write out a Journal in the evening. Getting it out onto paper gets it out of your minds.