Improvement, whether personal or professional, means understanding change and, more importantly, understanding exactly what it is that needs to change in order for things to get better. Seems simple right? But for many of us, we only recognize something is broken when we need it to work and, suddenly, it doesn’t. This can be especially true in the world of healthcare where so much of our work is reactive in nature. True improvement requires a more proactive approach, something that is flexible, efficient, and human-centered.
One way to develop a more proactive approach toward improvement is to remember the acronym, ADKAR. ADKAR represents the key stages for effectively putting change into action. The ADKAR model allows agility, adaptability, and individual ownership over the process that most directly impact everyday operation.
ADKAR is useful across a whole range of organizational applications. Next week, tune in as we focus more specifically on performance improvement with respect to NYS Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) recognition; identifying areas where change is needed by conducting a root-cause analysis, developing KPI’s from the desired workflows using structured data, and identifying and re-measuring baselines.
